Provo, Utah – Students at Brigham Young University have built a playground merry-go- round that generates electricity as children push it, an invention that could keep the lights on at schools in poor countries.
“This has the potential to benefit a lot of people in a way that they might not otherwise receive help,” said Geoff Germane, a faculty adviser. “Engineers really just have a desire to improve the quality of life.”
The prototype is the result of two semesters of planning, design and construction by six students.
The biggest challenge was to match the speed of the merry- go-round, which is about 10 revolutions per minute, to the speed required by the generator, at least 500 rpm.
The team had to design its own transmission, using a truck axle and gear wheels from an ordinary car – a design based on materials readily available in Ghana.
A retired engineer, Ben Markham, got the idea while serving a mission in Ghana for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
“Some of the schoolhouses we saw there were just uncomfortable and dark,” Markham said. “It’s just not conducive to learning.”
He has formed a nonprofit organization with the hope of building the merry-go-rounds and other playground equipment.
Future engineering classes at BYU and BYU-Idaho will work on swing systems and zip lines that generate electricity.
Markham hopes to test the merry-go-round in Ghana in the fall.
Students call the group Empowered Playgrounds.
“It kind of encapsulates the idea of what we’re trying to have happen,” student David Theurer said. “Not just to generate electricity, but to empower (kids) to light the way for their own education.”
