Building Hydrogen-Powered Unmanned Vehicles: a Thematic Proposal - Maker Chemistry - on Green Hydrogen Production

Abstract

This Article aims to share the results of a project that was developed with 80 students from Technical High School of Professional and Technological Education (PTE) at an institute located in the northeast of Brazil. The students discussed the global overview of fuel production and use, and how the introduction of green hydrogen into the market can contribute to reducing the effects caused by climate change. Guided by the fundamentals of hands-on and it yourself, ideas linked to the movement of active methodologies and the Maker philosophy, this activity demands the students to be divided into teams to model and print hydrogen-powered vehicles on 3D printers. Methodologically, this paper presents itself as qualitative research, more specifically action research, and its data were analyzed through discursive textual analysis. Regarding its results, we can describe that (1) regarding the attitudinal aspect, the proposal was responsible for mobilizing and intensely involving students in carrying out the task; (2) in relation to scientific concepts, the data allow us to infer that the participants took ownership of the content that was worked on, such as chemical reactions, fuels, combustion reactions, use of chemical equations; but besides that, they presented an expanded theoretical repertoire in which they debated the topic covering aspects such as economic, political, technological, and in particular, environmental and climate change issues. These results allow us to infer that we are facing a successful proposal that promoted the engagement of students focused on the discussion of an environmental topic as relevant as new sources of energy to fight against climate change.