New Eco badge

If you have been at KISC, I’m sure you’ve passed the tunnel on the way to the chalet from the campsite. Also I’m sure you’ve seen the beautiful art drawings on the wall such as the KISC Crystal, the Swiss flag, or the different badges.

A few weeks ago, we made some changes to our tunnel. One of them is………….

Ta da ~ KISC’s new Eco badge!! It’s so cool, isn’t it? Nobody has got the new badge yet. Come to KISC and get it!! Don’t know the way to earn the badge?

Let me tell you about it.

Eco is one of our 3 programme themes here at KISC (International Friendship, Eco and High Adventure). For each section we offer a bunch of guided and unguided activities you can do during your stay.

For the Eco award we have 5 activities you can participate in, divided in two different areas. You should complete 4 items from each area to gain the Eco award. One area is called ‘Natural World’. In this area you go out and explore and learn about nature. The other area is called ‘Eco Actions’ in which you can learn how to co-exist with nature and what you can do to protect the environment we live in.

Natural World

1. Take part in the Evolving Alps Hike
2. Complete the Gemmipass Eco Hike or the Electrifying Oeschinensee Adventure
3. Get more then 75 points in the Eco-I-Spy
4. Take part in a Centre Guided Hike, Snow & Ice activity, Climbing activity or any Winter activity
5. Go Bat Watching or stargazing with our Astronomy Activity

Eco Actions

1. Follow the Green Campsite Trail
2. Finish the Green Chalet Trail
3. Take part in the Solar Power Experience
4. Go to the Eco room, look at the displays and do one of the unguided activities using the leaflets there
5. Take part in The Secret Life of Bees

Find out more information about the different activities on our homepage. Why not be the first person who gets the new badge?!

Hye Mee (KR)

STS Summer 2012

 

Solar Power

As you already should know, there's a lot of cool stuff going on around the Centre. Did you know that you can easily pop popcorn with help from just a mirror and the sun?

I didn't, but today I was trying out what our Greenpeace guys are teaching our guests every day – Solar Power Experience.  It was pretty amazing. 

The earth fits 1.3 million times in the sun if you compare the sizes. It's huge! 

It's actually more than enough of energy to get from the sun to meet all of our energy needs. Isn't that cool?

So we started up with a description of the suns size compared to the earth. Can you see the little needle compared to the big ball? But the distance is not true in this picture..

We tried to heat a stove with only the help of some mirrors pointed in the suns directions. It warmed up really quickly. 

They also had a quiz with really good questions that you learned a lot from. A European uses fourteen times much energy than a person living in India, and an American twice as much as a European..  

And what makes an activity better than popcorn? Just a few seconds and the popcorn was all over the place. The heat goes up to 200 degrees in there.

Then we were using magnifiers to burn into wood, I was so amazed about this, it was so easy and fast. 

As you can tell from my words, there's a lot of amazing things you can try with just power from the sun. And if you want to make the world a better place, you should start using solar power instead of anything else, because as you can tell we have loads of it. And KISC loves to be ECO friendly as you know!

  

Kristina Bogren (SE)

STS Summer 2012