TBT: Talking Down the D.C. Bomb Squad
Back in 1998, Nicole led a team of 8th graders to build a Hydrogen Fuel Cell at Merit Academy.
They were invited to present their 15-cell stack in Washington D.C. before Congress, but they didn’t make it past the security point at the Hart Senate Building because the guards thought the kids’ hydrogen fuel cell was a bomb!
The irony here is that the Dept of Energy financed the entire venture including contracting engineers as subcontractors to help the students build the fuel cell and providing transportation/lodging for the team to travel to Humboldt University and to Washington DC.
The photo above is of Nicole meeting with the bomb squad to demonstrate how a fuel cell works and to show them that it wasn’t a bomb.
The good news: Nicole presented the fuel cell to Congress with her classmates and received a warm welcome and lots of interest!