A Xstream Project

In about a month I went from knowing nothing about a little town in San Mateo Ixtatán, Guatemala, to knowing more about it than I know about Charlottesville. I also learned a lot about batteries – how the material they are made of affects the battery, how often they should be fully charged, how they will lose charge over time, solid vs. gel cells, how to connect them in a system, how some batteries are meant for outputting short bursts of power while others are meant to be drawn out slowly, and so much more. I learned about how to transport energy in a similar fashion – by researching. On the side, I learned about alternative energies, San Mateo, and everything else that the project encompassed.

Of course, I’m probably not going to remember everything that I learned from this project. I already am forgetting the specific costs of different sizes of batteries. But I can definitely claim that I learned a bit about learning during this project and that is going to stick around a lot longer. Some notes of learning:

1. Use Google. Spending a little time just looking through the first Google results (probably including Wikipedia) will give you a basic knowledge of what you’re even trying to look for. After all given the assignment of “research batteries” is a little too broad and a basic search can help identify ways to break a topic like this into sub-topics.
2. Learn the keywords. Within a field of study (such as electrical engineering), there are certain terms that are most often used to describe a particular concept or technology. While you can refer to the ground of a circuit as 0V, it’s just not as common. Some keywords (“absorbed glass matte”) will help you quickly find information on the exact technology you want as opposed to using more general terms (“solid battery”).
3. Talk to experts. While this is not always possible, you should always take advantage of this if it is. Experts know more than you – that’s why they’re experts.  They have experience and can probably answer a question that would take you hours to research in about a minute. Of course, you have to be respectful and understand the basics before you ask a higher-level question but experts are an excellent resource.
4. Talk to other people. While talking to an expert will give you detailed knowledge, talking to other people can provide a new perspective. While you might be set on researching batteries, someone else may be more imaginative and think about storing energy (which is the real problem of course) in terms of pumped hydro.
5. Some things can’t be learned through research. No matter what you do, you’re not going to know everything about the culture of a town without going there and living there for a while. It’s not that it’s difficult to research, it’s impossible to research completely.

In the end, we chose not to use a battery in our system. We simply hooked up a turbine to a load. All that research didn’t make it into the final product. It did, however, make it into the paper as an explanation of why we chose not to use a battery. A final note on learning: as much time as you’ve spent on something, you cannot be too stubborn and require that your work be used in the product.

And all this without even considering the effect of last-minute information and differing information between clients and the consideration of identifying your client….