12-YEAR-OLD
DA VINCI SCIENCE CENTER INVENTOR
BILLY SCHOPF HONORED BY PLANET GREEN NETWORK
News Date
May 14, 2010
The Planet Green cable network named 12-year-old Da Vinci Science Center inventor Billy Schopf to its list of Top 5 Planet Saving Whiz Kids Friday in an installment of its Planet 100 web series.
The video was posted Friday afternoon on the network's site. Planet Green is a partner network to the Discovery Channel.
A Whitehall, Pa. resident and a sixth-grader at Whitehall-Coplay Middle School, Billy Schopf has developed a patent-pending wind-powered generating system for solar and electric vehicles. Billy's device features turbine-style blades affixed to the front of a vehicle. The blades twist uniquely to generate maximum wind power for any electric car's generator in the same manner that a wind turbine powers a building's electrical grid.
What makes Billy's system an unexpected success is both its ability to produce electricity during the day and at night and its ability to generate electricity at any wind speed. What makes Billy's system unique is its use of a thixotropic fluid to control the angles of the turbine blades in order to maximize their output.
Billy conceived his invention
while participating in a Saturday morning program for children whose families
hold Da Vinci Science Center membership. With the guidance of Dr. Frank Schweighardt,
Billy was able to file the original provisional patent paperwork and the full
patent application for free. Billy was honored by the Center in April with
its first Science Hall of Fame Young Scientist Award.
###
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||