What Is “Thermal Runaway”? A Chance For Students To Learn

Chemistry students at Brainerd High School tackled the problem of “thermal runaway” in collaboration with Underwriters Laboratories and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.(UL Research Institutes)How do you build a device that protects a battery from dangerous overheating that could spark a fire or an explosion - letting out some heat, while trapping the rest so the battery doesn’t burn the person touching it?This past semester, chemistry students at Brainerd High here in Chattanooga tackled the problem of “thermal runaway” in collaboration with Underwriters Laboratories, the safety science company - and faculty and students from the College of Engineering and Computer Science here on our campus, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.Ethan Schubert is the science teacher for the students at Brainerd High.Dr. Bradley Harris is associate professor and director of the chemical engineering program here at UTC.Megan O’Keeffe is a senior education specialist at UL Research Institutes.