Eric Brady | The Roanoke Times

Arissa Lopez, a 13-year-old student at Northside Middle School, pedals a bicycle with a generator connected to the rear wheel. She was powering the lights and a fan.

Twenty middle school girls from Roanoke County, Lynchburg and Scott County traded in curling irons and hair straighteners for wire strippers and crimpers this week at the Hotel Roanoke & Conference Center.

The girls wired 180 connections to run a bicycle-driven electric generator to power light bulbs, fans, radios and hair dryers. Appalachian Power Co. hosted the Activating and Energizing Girls in Science Energy Bike program, which is designed to boost the girls' interest in science and engineering. The program is a collaboration between the Ohio Energy Project and the American Electric Power Foundation.

"At first I didn't [like science], but since I came here, I do," said Sakia Konin, 12, a Northside Middle School student.

"This is good because girls think only guys are born with innate skills to fix things," said Kurt Lehmkuhl, the project's energy bike coordinator.

Scraps of copper wire, slivers of red and black insulation and blue and yellow fork terminals littered the floral carpet of the hotel ballroom. The girls spent Tuesday and Wednesday poring over 15 pages of wiring instructions and a matching schematic as they stripped, clipped and crimped wires.

Tina Musarra, a Northside teacher, urged her group of four girls to check and recheck the connections.

"Before we told them we were done, we looked to see if any [of the wires] were out, loose or wriggling," said Amy Chen, 13. "We found four mistakes."

Once the wiring was fixed, Musarra's girls screwed three types of light bulbs (incandescent, compact fluorescent and LED) into sockets on their board and connected it to the generator on the bike. Megan Hubbard, 12, pedaled the test run, and when the rows of bulbs lit up one by one, everyone in the room cheered. Musarra's group received a power inverter and a hair dryer to use with the energy bike for getting the connections right on the first try.

Musarra said she plans to use the energy bike, which is valued at $5,000, next school year in her eighth grade physical science classes. The bike will be used to teach Standards of Learning objectives about the flow of electricity and the transfer of energy.

"The kids who want to use the electric pencil sharpener will have to pedal to make it work," she said.

The girls in the Energy Bike program stayed two nights at the hotel, bunking four per room. Musarra put a piece of tape across her students' door to make sure there was no unsupervised late night gallivanting. She warned them broken tape would mean a phone call to their parents and the end of the adventure.

The accommodations taught the girls several non-science-related lessons: Megan chided her roommates to clean the room. Amy and Arissa Lopez, 13, agreed Sakia took too long in the shower. For Lopez, it was the first time she stayed in a hotel -- and an experience she enjoyed.

"The beds are big and soft," she said.

But Musarra said what they enjoyed most was working on the wiring boards.