First LEGO League: taking Solatube® Daylighting System to the finals in Taiwan

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The NXT generation team, consisting of 8 children of Foundation Groendomein Wasven in Eindhoven, The Netherlands has won the first prize at the Benelux Final of the FIRST LEGO League (FFL). FIRST LEGO League is a global program of 52 countries and approximately 15,000 children, created to increase excitement about science and technology by solving real world scientific problems. The topic of the 2009-2010 challenge "Smart Move", challenges children to look at their community and discover how people, animals, or information travel. The challenge consists of researching potential problems, and finding solutions to make these travels safer and more energy efficient. NXT Generation won this challenge with their innovative design to help animals to cross roads safely. The team's thorough research led to the conclusion that many animals including a rare species of salamander facing extinction are having trouble getting in and out of the local nature reserve, which is completely enclosed between roads. The solution to help the salamander was to create a tunnel under the roads to facilitate easy movement between nature reserves. One obstacle the team found is that animals don't like to transfer through long, dark tunnels. NXT generation eliminated this problem by inventing an innovative Ecotunnel incorporating natural daylight from the Solatube® Daylighting System. Solatube Daylighting Systems provide natural daylight, to dark internal rooms and spaces where there typically is no other option for natural daylight. The Solatube® 750 DS was installed on top of the Ecotunnel to capture and redirect natural daylight through the Raybender® 3000 patented technology. The daylight was transferred down the highly reflective (99.7%), Spectralight® Infinity tubing, where the Solatube® diffuser evenly spread the daylight inside the Ecotunnel to illuminate the path for the salamanders. By using the Solatube Daylighting System, the costs of building the Ecotunnel were reduced, and an environmentally and animal friendly solution was created. This innovative design of an Ecotunnel using a Solatube® Daylighting System won the competition comprised of 32 teams from the Benelux region who participated in the "Smart Move" project. The team is now on their way to Taiwan to represent the Benelux region and compete against teams from all over the world. For additional information regarding Solatube® Daylighting Systems please visit www.solatube.com

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