These high school students are not normally angry people. But it’s hard not to be on sweltering days, when extreme heat makes it difficult to think, and the astroturf playground burns their feet, the ground 90 degrees.

“When it gets really hot, my mood changes – I get sweaty, I get stuffy, I get angry. It really affects the work I do,” said Akankhita Chaudhuri, from Macarthur Girls High School, her classmates nodding alongside her.

So she and nearly a thousand of her peers in western Sydney are doing something about it.

For 10 weeks, year 9 and 10 students from nine schools have been working to solve the issue of soaring heat in their schools as part of a project delivered by the Powerhouse Museum with support from NSW Office of the Chief Scientist and Engineer, local councils, universi

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