02x06 - Insulation Station

[bunniefuu]

[girls] S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] We need you

[girls] S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] Come on!

When I need help, and I've got a question

there's a place I go for inspiration

Gotta get to the Web, check the girls' investigation

What girls?

[Izzie] SciGirls!

Whoo!

[girls] S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] I need you!

[girls] S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] Come on!

You've gotta log on, post,

upload, pitch in! Yeah!

Wanna get inside a world that's fascinating?

The time is right 'cause SciGirls are waiting,

[girls] S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] We need you!

[girls] S-C-I-G-I-R-L-S

[Izzie] SciGirls!!

Jake, your mom said you were out here.

[shivering] Y-y-y-yep.

Why? It's freezing!

Y-y-y-y-ep, b-b-b-but I have to see m-m-m-m-y s-s-s-star.

[Izzie] Your star?

I bought one online; it was only $..

I get to name it, and it comes with a Ginsu Kn*fe!

Wow, what'd you call it?

"My star's better than your star."

I don't have a star.

No, th-th-that's the name of it.

Oh, there are like, a bijillion stars out there!

How are you supposed to find yours?

It won't be visible for a couple of hours.

Only p-p-p-problem is, I'm so c-c-c-cold!

I can't hold my star map s-s-s-still.

You're never going to find your star shivering like that.

I kn-kn-know; I know.

It's time to call the SciGirls.

SciGirls, I've got a burning question for you.

Let's see if you've got a hot idea.

A-ha!

Watch for the arrows! They're clues

for the "Pick'M, Stick'M" game on the website.

[SciGirls] I got snow. I'm just eating the clean part.

[all exclaim happily]

Are you sure that it's going to be cold enough to...

Whoa. It's all bumpy.

[all exclaim happily]

My name is Grace, I'm years old,

and living on the lake is fun.

Every winter we put an ice shanty on the lake

so we can fish in it.

Should I just like, jump?

My name is Greta.

We really like snow

and we're always begging for it.

Winter's probably my favorite part of being in Minnesota.

I can't see it out here. It's this thick.

I'm Sukhmani, I'm years old.

Hi!

I would describe my personality

fun, loving, and caring.

You want to stop me now?

Hi, I'm Nikita.

I like going outside.

Living in Minnesota in the winter, it gets really cold,

and I get to wear hats like this.

[Grace] Every year on Medicine Lake, they have an event

called the Art Shanty Projects.

It's like a carnival on ice and artists

create themes for their icehouses.

This year they us asked to work on the Welcome Shanty,

and our job was to make it more energy efficient.

Jane is one of the artists who created the Welcome Shanty.

Hi, hey, I'm Jane.

[Nikita] We brought the shanty to Grace's house

and explained it's hard to keep it warm.

[Jane] As you can see, we built our shanty to be translucent,

so we could get heat from the sun during the day.

And it has corrugated plastic on the outside

and one layer of Bubble Wrap on the inside.

[Nikita] Jane thought that her ice shanty was too cold last year,

so she asked us to figure out a way to keep more heat inside.

[Grace] We had to do a bunch of investigations

to figure out how to keep the ice shanty warm

for the people who were working inside.

So do you think you can help us?

Yeah!Oh we'd love to.

[Jane] What I think we'll do is we're just going to pull it

and slide it right back here.

We're good?Oh perfect!

[Greta] It was surprising 'cause we really didn't know

what the shanty was going to look like.

[all] Let's go!

I'll guide this part.

Sometimes there was confusion on which pieces went where.

It could be right side rear, wouldn't that be on the right

then the back one on the right side?

[Jane] You're right, right side rear.

Okay, I'm going to lift up.

Got it! That's it.Got it!

I think it turns pretty good.

[Sukhmani] It was fun building the shanty.

Okay, back up over this way.

Everybody was shouting, trying to get their job done.

Hi!

[Greta] Once we put it up, we were all like, oh yeah,

we can totally make this warmer, 'cause it's so cold right now.

There's so many things we can do with it.

Let's get the shanty, whoo!.

Oh wow. Whoa! It's nice and warm in here too.

I thought it was going to be like that tall

and then the whole thing would only be this tall,

but it's really like, tall.

It's way bigger than I expected also.

So I didn't really think that it would be

actually like, an -by- square.

I think it's going to be an interesting space to change,

to make it warmer, just play around

with the walls and the cracks.

Right here. , , ,

SciGirls! Alright!

[Nikita] The first thing we wanted to do was to figure out

where the shanty was losing heat,

especially after the sun went down.

Hi. Hi, nice to meet you, I'm Angela.

[Sukhmani] Angela is a mechanical engineer

who measures energy efficiency, and we asked her to help us.

So what we're going to do today is test out just how much heat

the house is losing, using an infrared camera.

[Grace] To take the measurements, first we have to warm up the shanty.

[Angela] There's actually a fan

that's pushing warm air into your ice shanty.

Just to show how powerful this tool is, take off your glove,

and go up there and put your hand on the wall

and hold it there for a second.

[Nikita] While Angela was looking at the ice shanty,

I went up and put my hand against it.

Okay, that's long enough, you can let go.

[Angela] See the handprint there? See it?

[Nikita] That's so cool.

The heat off my body stayedon the ice shanty

for a couple seconds, so you'reable to see where my hand was.

What does the heat loss look like?

[Angela] The places that you're losing heat will show up red here,

and it's quite a bit cooler down at the bottom of the building,

because that's where a lot of air is being

drawn into the building, then as it's heated, it rises,

then it escapes out the leaks in the top.

Ideally when you're done insulating an air ceiling,

there'll be a lot less of these red noticeable lines.

[Sukhmani] So the blue is just cold? [Angela] Right.

[Sukhmani] And it's not losing as much heat as the red is?

[Angela] Exactly; it's still losing heat, but not as much. [Sukhmani] Okay.

SciGirls rock!

My name's Greta, I'm years old

and I enjoy playing soccer and basketball.

Whoo!

My dog Ruby, she's a crazy -year-old chocolate lab.

And I play the French horn.

This is my little brother and my little sister.

Bye!

Okay guys, so don't you think we should

look for like, a mentor to help us insulate?

Solar house competition.

Oh yeah, in the University of Minnesota.

What if you go to meet us?

"The team is responsible for designing and documenting the solar house."

Click on her.

[Greta] Shengyin built the solar house at the University of Minnesota.

The solar house is definitely pretty cool.

That really used a lot of insulating,

so we thought it'd be good advice for us

when we're insulating our shanty.

"Dear Shengyin, we would like you to help us."

We thought she could be a great help.

When we asked her, she said "yes."

[SciGirls laugh]

Shengyin? Hello. Hello.

Hello, girls, nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you too.

Well, her house was definitely pretty cool.

I can't reach it!

It's not like the regular houses that we live in today.

You guys want to start in the kitchen?

Sure! How does the kitchen work?

One of the thingsin the kitchen that's unique

is a lot ofenergy-efficient appliances.

All of these appliances, theoven, the cooktop, the fridge

and the freezer, they're really low energy; they're energy star rated.

These are a special kind of solar panels.

This portion has this glass kind, this bifacial

that collects energy on both sides

or that creates energy on both sides.

The roof has a slightly different solar panel.

[Grace] How come that isn't solar paneled?

[Shengyin] Because it's facing north;

it's not the best direction to get access to the sun.

Oh, that's cool.

It's getting chilly, let's go back inside.

[Greta] We were really curious about the process that they used

to design the solar house.

[Shengyin] Well, it was what we call an engineering process.

Essentially, it's a little bit like trial and error.

We come up with an idea, we test it out, we make prototypes,

and we come together and make a decision

on what the final should be.

Shengyin helped us with some of the ideas for the investigation.

You girls want to see the insulation that's in the walls?

Is this in all of the walls?

Most of them, and this is the insulation in the floor.

Different materials let different amounts of heat

through it, and at different speeds.

And then she kind of helped us figure out

how we were going to actually do the investigations.

But if you're trying some different things as insulation,

you can do a lot of different kinds of tests.

And your main test will be to see

how quickly the temperature changes

from one side of the insulation to the other.

What would your recommendations be for insulation?

Well, I'd recommend just playing

with any materials that you can find.

I would try anything, um, even air can insulate.

If you trap air and make sure it's not moving,

that actually acts as an insulating layer too.

Like the thin foam, like this.

Yeah, what kind of things look like foam or remind you of foam at home?

[SciGirls] Sponges. Sponges! [Shengyin] Try some sponges.

You may want to think about, in addition to testing

the different types of insulation, testing what impacts

insulation has on different surfaces of your shanty.

So you can try insulating just one surface at a time,

for example, the ceiling, and see what impact that has,

versus insulating one wall.

Hi, my name is Nikita and this is my brother Hunter.

Hello.

We enjoy playing games and sports together,

like football. [laughs] This is my mom.

Are we there yet?

Dad's an airline pilot.

I like swimming, I play the cello,

I enjoy ice skating and Japanese Anime.

But, my passion is horses!

This is my friend's horse, Gizmo.

Say hi Gizmo!

[Greta] Today we are building a prototype of the shanty

and testing which walls we want to put insulation on,

and what kind of insulation we want to use.

I'll sketch.

It's going to be about this thick.

Yeah, the whole shanty is a square.

[Grace] We built a little model of our shanty, so we wouldn't have to

do the test on like, a big -by--foot shanty.

You're scaring me there, Sukhmani.

Me and Nikita, we made a basic square

and we used the same material on all sides.

We only need a -degree angle, or -degree angle.

There you go. There, just like that.

I'm going to hold it with my hand you can put tape on it.

You could use cardboard at the bottom.

We put a hole in one of the sides so we could get

the temperature using the temp probe from the inside of the box.

We want to face it towards the shanty.

And then that can go right there.

The first thing we had to do was take the temperature

on the inside of the prototype with no insulation.

That's called the control.

It's used to compare to other results.

It's the only way that we can measure

the impact of the insulation.

So we're going to want to measure it from the light.

centimeters.

So the temperature is ..

We turn the light on for minutes. Go!

You don't have to hold it there.

Just when we take the temperature.

And then we record the temperature every minute.

Now. .

Until minutes was up.

Now.This is our th minute actually.

Close. .. Closer.

Then we turn off the lamp and we record every minute

until minutes are up.

We're seeing how fast the temperature

inside the mini shanty drops.

..

..

Now..

We're going to cover this north wall,

opposite of where the sun is.

Then we insulated the roof and one wall.

And we just tape the insulation on there.

Ready, go.

After that, we insulated the roof and walls.

Finally, we did the roof and walls.

The first couple tests, we did it with the shanty

on one side and we accidentally like, moved it.

We had changed the angle of the shanty from the light,

so that might have moved the temperature probe

and gotten a different result.

The probe got closer to the light bulb,

which was representing the sun.

It went up high and then it kinda stayed high.

I couldn't believe it at first.

I was like, how could all of that be messed up,

but the results were really weird,

so that would explain why.

I think it was kind of a pain because we just got done with it

and then oh my gosh, we have to redo it again.

That was really frustrating.

Sometimes to get it right, you have to do it over.

I cannot believe this is what we're using as insulation.

I tested it and Cheesy Poofs rule!

Oh the air makes them poofely delicious

and really good at holding in heat.

Okay, all done!

Lets field-test this baby.

Oh yeah, nice and toasty.

Let's take a look with my trusty thermal cam app.

[shutter click]

Cool on the outside, warm on the inside.

[crackling]

[crackling] Oops, ooh, is it getting colder?

Uh-um.

[shivers] S-s-s-o cold,

still cheesy, but really cold.

Heat is escaping everywhere.

Cheesy Poofs too!

[munch, munch, munch]

Have you been eating the insulation?

No.

Jake!

They're Cheesy Poofs, I can't be wrapped in Cheesy Poofs,

and n-n-n-not eat them.

I'm only human after all!

Oh, we need a plan B!

♪ ♪

centimeters.Okay.

Greta, How about we take it down

so it doesn't move around while we're...Sure.

Should we tape it on the bottom

or should we just like, tape it to the sides?

Tape it to the sides.

Here, let me, here let me try.Got it. There.

I'll turn it off and on when you need to.

Ready, set, now.

seconds.

Okay, let's put on the insulation.

This is the right wall right?Right.

Like, it's ..

. degrees Fahrenheit.

We're done. Yea! [sigh of relief]

[Grace] We figured out the difference

between the high and the low temperature from each test,

and the one that lost the least amount of heat

was the best insulator.

The roof and walls lost the least amount of heat.

We're all agreeing on the roof and walls.

Yes.Okay.

Hi, my name is Sukhmani, and I'm years old.

I've been dancing all my life.

These are all the trophies I have won from dancing.

This one was for Indian dancing.

Hi Dad!Hi Sukhmani!

I'm going to show you my favorite dance step

in the whole entire world.

It's really cool; all you have to do is sway side to side.

I like to play the violin too.

And the last thing I like to usually do

is play chess with my dad. Bye!

Shengyin told us to use a cup

and fill the top with insulation.

[Grace] After we figured out which walls we wanted to insulate,

we had to figure out which material would do the best job to insulate the shanty.

When we tested the insulation, we put a big layer

of the cup with the insulation inside of it.

This one's too small, this one's way too small.

Yeah, and this one's even smaller.

We filled that with what kind of insulation we wanted.

Greta got the control, I got sponges,

Grace got Bubble Wrap, and Nikita got the cardboard.

Which one do you think is going to be the warmest

after the minutes?

[Nikita] I was thinking the Bubble Wrap or the cardboard.

I just cut Bubble Wrap out, then I'm going to wrap it in

this plastic stuff so the Bubble Wrap doesn't fall out of it.

Then the sponges it's also kind of like that insulation

that they used on the house at the U. of M.

Oh, that's perfect!

[Greta] We're just comparing what the sponges, the Bubble Wrap,

and the cardboard, how their results turn out

in comparison to the nothing.

And when we tested the insulation,

we had a cup of hot water, we took the temperature

every minutes for minutes with each one.

Oh it's hot.

We tested all insulations at the same time

because we wanted to make it faster.

And insert.

.

Is it a minute, Greta?

Yeah, but we were doing minutes.

, , ...

What's the temperature?

Okay, um cardboard, ..

It was kind of hectic. We'd be like, okay this is

our time, then one person would be writing it down,

the next person would shout it out. It's only ?

It would be too crowded to go through, all of us at the same time.

Mine's increasing! minutes, seconds.

, , .

Oh!

What is it? ..

Yeah, it was crazy.

But we're done!

We figured out that the control sponges

and the cardboard had similar results.

And the Bubble Wrap dropped the least,

that means Bubble Wrap was the best insulator.

After we finished our tests,

we decided to use layers of Bubble Wrap

and to insulate the roof and walls.

Hi, I'm Grace.

[laughs]

This is my brother Jack,

and this is my brother Joe. [Joe] Hi!

I'm going to play the piano.

Okay, this is my room.

I also like to crochet.

Whipstick is one of my favorite things to do,

even when it's cold.

I think we should start

filling in the cracks with the caulk filling, yeah.

Filling... thingumajig.

With the thermal camera, you could see heat

really escaping from the top and all the cracks up here

and then there was less down here.

So we used sealant to cover up any holes or leaks.

This stuff is really like putty.

I thought it was supposed to be more like foamy.

For sealant, well it didn't hold together very well.

It was too cold outside.

Feel my fingers. They're freezing!

So it made it really not very foamy, kind of drippy.

[all exclaim]

This is like the bubble of the bubbler's wrap!

Are you ready? ... ...

I couldn't even imagine that much Bubble Wrap in my life.

This is not going to fit in the door.

centimeters.

Yeah. Grab it.

Okay. Pull tight!

That good? Yeah.

Is that it? Okay, we're done.

Make sure that it's under that line.

[Sukhmani] So we did the walls with layers of Bubble Wrap

and I know we had lots of fun popping half of it.

I'm having trouble here. This is so fun!

I can't help myself!

But then we couldn't use it, sadly.

All this work, you guys, let's do at a time. Okay?

[Grace] I liked how everyone kind of works together

and everyone has like, their own thing that they're doing,

but it like all comes together in the end.

In our experiments we figured out that the Bubble Wrap

was the best insulation out of the insulations that we chose,

and that to do the roof and sides

was the best way, was the best way to insulate them.

Just do the middle, there's no reason to put ,

you just need in the middle.

Or if not, you only need .

[Sukhmani] It was finally time for us to see

if all the work we did paid off.

Be careful, it's slippery.

[Greta] When Angela came back...

[Angela] Do you guys want to look at it? [SciGirls] Yeah.

[Greta] ...we took another picture, which is the after, that's

what our results were after we put all the insulation on.

You know, you guys did a great job

filling all the, the air leaks,

but there's still going to be a few here and there.

The heat loss is not as bad as before.

[Grace] Well, instead of .

[Angela] That's good,yup, it's a lot warmer.

So between your air sealingand insulating,

you're keeping a lot more heatinside of the shanty.

So you guys did a really great job!

Yeah! Whoo!!

[laughing]

I thought that that was, we did a really good job.

Um, we all worked together.

And the shanty's going to hold more heat

and keep the volunteers warmer.

There's our shanty!

[Grace] Now that the shanty was insulated,

we were really excited to see it set up on Medicine Lake

along with all the other shanties.

We have to power this.

I'm putting it through the hole so Sukhmani, who is inside,

can, and connect it to the battery.

Thank you.

Got it.

You guys ready?

[all] Yeah!

Whoo!

Welcome to the Art Shanty Project!

I found my job was to start welcoming visitors.

Oh hi! May I have a program please?

Yeah, this tells you all about the art shanties

and what is here.

Okay, perfect, have a good day, bye.

Bye.

I don't think it's such a good idea for bicycles to be on ice.

[knocking]

Hi!Hi!

Wow, look at this!

Yeah. This looks great!

It looks wonderful. What were some of the challenges?

I think the sealant was kind of hard,

'cause it got really gooey and didn't stick well.

Wow, no wonder, it feels a lot warmer in here.

Yeah, and to look at it, it looks great.

The insulation looked like it went well.

Thank you! High-!

Yea, alright. Good job.

Let's go look at other people's shanties.

Check 'em out, let's go!

I think it was a great experience

to learn new things and how to interact with other people.

It was really fun to get to know all the SciGirls.

Ta-Da!

I think that we'll have a really close relationship after this.

I felt really happy that we did a really good job.

We could show off our good work.

Oh she's so cute, she's a little mouse!

It was fun.

Group hug. Yeah.

Got your clues? Head on over to the Web and play

"Pick'M, Stick'M" at pbskidsgo.org.

Okay, this should keep

the warm air and Cheesy Poofs from escaping. Okay?

[in muffled tone] Okay!

So, you ready to find your star?

Ready.

Do you see it?

Oh yeah, it's right there.

Are you sure?

Maybe it's that one,

or that one, they kinda all look the same.

Yeah, but yours still rules.

It does, doesn't it?

Of course, I have a better idea for some fun.

What's that?

Whoo, hoo, ha, ha-ha!

Oh, ho, yeah, Bubble Wrap popping rules! Thanks SciGirls!

[popping]Ah!

[popping]