The wheels are turning again in Zach Powers’ class.

Powers (formerly Ronneberg) teaches physics at Da Vinci Charter Academy, where for two years, students have been harnessing the energy of spinning bicycle wheels and converting it into energy for everyday use in the village of Sabana Grande, Nicaragua.

Two years ago, students created a bicycle-powered blender that gave operators of an off-the-grid restaurant in Sabana Grande a way to make the popular juice smoothies everyone there loves without using traditional power sources.

After a year in the classroom creating and perfecting their prototype, the students and chaperones had traveled to Nicaragua, where they lived with host families, taught classes to local children and built the bicycle-powered blender with the assistance of residents.

This past summer, a new group of physics students headed to Sabana Grande, this time to build a more versatile bicycle-powered generator that could be used for any number of things. Again, the 13 students stayed with host families, participated in reforestation efforts and taught local children, accompanied this time by Powers, Da Vinci biology teacher Rebekah Rottenberg and volunteer Deb Bruns.

It was Bruns who brought the idea to Ronneberg three years ago. She had visited Sabana Grande with her family, meeting the “Solar Women of Totogalpa,” a group of women who have been making the most of energy harnessed from the sun, wind and other sources.
These women have been experimenting with renewable energy technologies for years, making and selling everything from solar panels to solar cookers and solar dryers. They even started the off-the-grid restaurant, but hadn’t figured out a way to make smoothies with an alternative energy source.

In stepped the Da Vinci students, and the rest is history.

Student Mimi Wilcox made a return trip to Nicaragua this summer, one of a handful of students to visit twice. Briana Campos went for the first time, but was following in the footsteps of her older sister, Maggie. Briana even stayed with the same family her sister had stayed with the year before.

“I got there and said, ‘Hi, I’m Maggie’s sister,’ ” she laughed.

She was welcomed with open arms.

“It’s so easy to become one of the people there,” Campos said.

In building the bicycle-powered generator, the Da Vinci students enlisted the expertise of the solar women, as well as the insight and assistance of local teens.

“We wanted to get everyone involved,” said student Tal Medovoy.

At first it wasn’t easy, Medovoy said, because the local teens simply would agree with all of the Da Vinci students’ ideas. So the Davis teens stopped offering ideas and suggestions, and soon enough, the Nicaraguan teens were providing more input.

“It ended up being really efficient and the language barrier was almost gone by the end,” Medovoy said.

The group stayed a few days longer this time — a full two weeks compared to the week and half last summer — and used their extra time to see a little more of the country and spend more time with their host families.

They taught classes to the local children again, mostly about water and electricity, refurbished the bicycle blender built the previous year, and helped with local efforts to reforest the nearby mountainside. The latter proved eye-opening.

Used to all of the hard labor and heavy lifting of life in Sabana Grande, the women there had no problem carrying as many as 10 young trees up the hillside at once — sometimes even texting on their phones at the same time. Meanwhile, the Da Vinci boys struggled under the weight of two or three trees, giving the local women a good laugh.

One of the things Team Blend students noticed was the time and labor required of the women to irrigate their crops growing at higher elevations. The women would literally lug buckets of water up the hillside, over and over again, to water their crops.

That got them thinking of what else might be powered by spinning bicycle wheels — namely, a pump.

“A pedal-powered pump might help get the water higher,” Powers noted.

The team hasn’t settled on the pump for this year’s project just yet, but it’s a contender. Meanwhile, Rottenberg is planning to introduce a biology component to the project. Possibilities for that include Da Vinci students identifying and studying native plants and insects from photos sent by villagers.

Whatever they end up doing, the members of Team Blend are already committing to a third trip to Nicaragua and all of the attendant time and fundraising that will be needed. Powers said the trip cost about $2,000 per student for travel, materials for their projects and everything else, with students themselves gathering much of it through their own fundraising efforts.

Community members who are interested in helping out are welcome. Learn more at the team’s website,www.teamblend.org.

— Reach Anne Ternus-Bellamy at [email protected] or 530-747-8051. Follow her on Twitter at @ATernusBellamy

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Team Blend members, from left, Graham Garzon, Caroline Paikoff and Mimi Wilcox watch as one of the local children in Sabana Grande, Nicaragua goes for a spin on their blender bike creation. Courtesy photo

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Da Vinci students and Team Blend members Alan Kyle, right, and Tal Medovoy, center, work on a bicycle-powered blender in Sabana Grande, Nicaragua. Courtesy photo

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