★★☆Plant Your Mobile Charger in the Dirt

*Teachers will divide the article into 2-3 paragraphs to help you understand and check the pronunciation of the difficult words.

Vocabulary

*Read the words carefully.

1. courtyard/ˈkoɚtˌjɑɚd/(n.)

an open space that is surrounded completely or partly by a building or group of buildings

2. circuit/ˈsɚkət/(n.)

the complete path that an electric current travels along

3. photosynthesis /ˌfoʊtoʊˈsɪnθəsəs/ (n.)

the process by which a green plant turns water and carbon dioxide into food when the plant is exposed to light

Article

Plant Your Mobile Charger in the Dirt


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(1) Three university students in Santiago, Chile have developed a plant-powered device to charge their mobile phones.

(2) The three engineering students got the idea for the device while sitting in their school’s courtyard. Their invention is a small biological circuit they call E-Kaia. It captures the energy plants produce during photosynthesis.

(3) A plant uses only a small part of the energy produced by that process. The rest goes into the soil. E-Kaia collects that energy. The device plugs into the ground and then into a mobile phone.

(4) The E-Kaia solved two problems for the engineering students. They needed an idea for a class project. They also needed an outlet to plug in their phones.

(5) One of the student inventors, Camila Rupcich, says the device changes the energy released from the plant into low-level power to charge phones.

(6) The E-Kaia is able to fully recharge a mobile phone in less than two hours.

Discussion

*Let’s talk about the article base on the questions below

1. What do you think about this new invention?
2. How do you usually save power on your mobile phone?
3. What was your greatest science project when you were a student?

Tags: Education, environmental issues, people, Science, Technology

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