What the World Needs Now
by Dennis L. Feucht
Innovatia Laboratories
I am driving to Spanish Lookout, a largely agrarian colony in Belize of
1500 Mennonites on about 50,000 acres of land. It is located north of the
Belize River and my Chrysler minivan is on the hand-cranked ferry crossing
it. I am in thought, contemplating how to teach people with an average seventh-grade
education about electricity.
"What is electricity?" I ask my class. "Is it a kind of fire?" "You tell us," they say. "We're here to learn."
"But what do you suppose?" I persist, wanting to stir up their sense of wonder about the topic. It's not fire, they conclude, nor a fluid. The first class is underway.
The colonists operate their own electric power plant, using 2-MW Caterpillar
diesel generators, with an average load of 1.5 MW. Much of the power is
not only for residences but for feed mills, metal shops, a chicken processing
plant, and a sawmill nine miles north of the power plant. They have maintained
the plant for years, though Jake, the thirty-something plant manager --
a short, wiry guy who is both personable and inquisitive -- has a fifth-grade
education. Until recently he did not know the difference between voltage
and current.
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