NORTH ANDOVER — The polar bear prances back and forth, shooing away butterflies.
A light turns on, then some computers and a television. Music pipes out of a room somewhere down the hall.
Within seconds, the ice beneath the bear cracks and he falls into the ocean, arms flailing, head barely bobbing above the water's surface as he fights for his life.
It might seem a bit dramatic, but this has become a common occurrence inside Brooks School dorms.
The prep school has installed flat screens in all 10 of its dorms, using an animated polar bear to show how much energy students are using in real time.
It's all part of Brooks' push to go green.
And it raises an interesting question: Will a drowning polar bear get students to turn off a light?
"I think it's good to have a visual of how much energy you're consuming," Science Department head Brian Palm said. "We're trying to create behavioral changes. We tied it to a polar bear, and it seems to be working so far."
The premise is simple. The bear is happy when the power is low. Turn on more appliances, and the sun comes out and the ice melts. When too much power is being used, the bear falls through the ice.
"During study hours, everyone turns on their computers, and he instantly goes in the water," said Chris O'Book, a senior from North Andover.
Students have named the bear and campaigned to save the electronic polar bear. Each dorm competes to see which one can keep its bears alive.
"We named our polar bear Polie," said Sam Eisenman, a senior from New York. "There's this campaign to save Polie. Everyone's turning off lights, even in the stairway. I'm coming home tripping all over stuff for this polar bear."
Palm got the idea from his mother, who read about the new technology.
The polar bear was created by a professor and students at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. They started the company TellEmotion.
Brooks was one of the first schools to launch the polar bear in May.
"The students just fall in love with that bear," said Lorie Loeb, assistant professor of computer science at Dartmouth. "They respond to it. They have names for the bear. They campaign for him. They start e-mailing friends — 'Turn off your light.'"
Worcester Academy now has it, and Hanover is starting to deploy this in some of its public buildings.
"We're in talks with a half dozen colleges and boarding schools," Loeb said.
Students say the bear has brought about debate and awareness.
"If you put a screen in the dorm with all graphs, who could care less?" said Andie Missert, a sophomore from Windham, N.H.
One dorm cut its electricity consumption by 21 percent.
"During the day, you see people turn off lights when they've never turned them off before," said Eliza Perocchi, a junior from North Andover.
While the bear has only been in dorms for a month, Palm said they've seen a difference in electricity consumption already. They'll be able to gauge savings better next school year.
The polar bear was only in a few dorms at the start.
"In dorms where it was on, there was a big difference," said Dean Ellerton, the school's chief information officer.
Palm said if this works well, the school might tie the polar bear to amounts of paper produced in the printer system and trash produced in each dorm.
He said next year there will be a 3D version of the polar bear program, where students can watch as a "momma bear and baby bear" are separated, the ice cracking and breaking them apart, when too much energy is being used.
"You have to work to bring them back together," Palm said. "It's like a movie."
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