Emerging Leaders

The pandemic can’t stop us from fulfilling our mission! June 10th marked a new cornerstone for UCell – the day that our outreach group went international! We delivered a Zoom class to America On Track- located in Orange County USA, America On Track are an afterschool leadership group that focuses on Civic Engagement with a focus on Environmentalism. America On Track are a really cool initiative and we were excited to work with them! Our audience consisted of approximately 70 students. Some of these students were high-school aged, and others were mentees in the program who are in 4th, 5th, or 6th grade. The talk lasted for around 50 minutes and we later opened the floor to questions that lasted for a further 20 minutes. We made the talk very interactive, constantly challenging our audience to participate in a series of quizzes.

The talk covered the following topics:

–          Energy production and storage

–          How batteries work and their challenges

–          How fuel cells work and their challenges

–          The applications of both – particularly in the electric vehicle market

We had some interesting questions that led to a small debate amongst the UCell presenters such as – what our favourite renewable energy is, and what economic challenges there are in using certain renewable energy sources. We also provided various demonstrations that included a clock powered by potatoes (potato clock) and a lemon battery! These were a huge hit amongst the youngsters constantly receiving messages during the demonstration along the lines of “wow”, “oh my god” and “how is that even possible?”. As the talk ended, we closed with a competition to design a town that works purely on hydrogen and renewables, with the winner receiving an Amazon voucher worth $25. We really enjoyed talking to America on Track and would welcome the opportunity to work again with them sometime in the future. It’s great to see other groups across the pond that share our motivation to demonstrate and educate the importance of sustainability and reducing our reliance on non-renewable energy sources.