A long country drive leads to hydrogen/solar powered cars

Yesterday went well. We picked up Designer from his friend's house and went for a drive in the mountains and back home. We love to do the drives. It's like everyone is captive and we have some of our best conversations during that time.

We started talking about something we saw on the Science Channel (which is a favorite in this house) on a show called Eco-Tech. If you get the channel and have a chance to watch Future Fuels, it is quite an interesting show. Anyway, we started talking about converting our own cars to solar/hydrogen power. The savings to our pocket book would be the number one reason but then it has zero ecological footprint and would help get rid of dependence on foreign oils.

We came home so that we could start researching hydrogen fuels and solar power sources. It is absolutely amazing at what is available on the internet. If you go to Google video and type in hydrogen there is something like 4500 videos on the subject that range from two minutes to a full hour long.

I know that most of us parents are not thrilled with game consoles but I have to say that there is one great feature on the PlayStation 3 You can surf the internet with it. We were able to watch videos from the You Tube and Google on our big TV as a family and discuss each one. We must have watched an hour of videos.

After watching quite a few the boys decided to try some things that we had seen about creating hydrogen. We had empty plastic bottle and water but no electrical wiring. We'll probably pick up some today and do an experiment with that. Learning Master and the kids love doing this kind of stuff. Hmmm, Dark Oak Woman, you would be so proud with all the unschooling we are doing this year.

Obviously this will be an ongoing project for the year. I encourage each of you to show your children how to see pictures and videos and news stories on their favorite topics by using Google. It really has some incredible features for kids to learn from.