Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Contest For: Teachers and students in grades 6 to 12 Prizes: $100,000 in Samsung technology and classroom resources Register by October 30, 2018
How will your students apply science, technology, engineering, arts, and math (STEAM) to solve a problem in their school community?
That’s the challenge posed by Samsung’s Solve for Tomorrow contest, which aims to promote STEM learning, leadership, and community serve through authentic, hands-on problem solving.
The competition, which is open to all public school teachers and students in grades 6 to 12, awards $2 million in classroom technology and supplies.
Last year, three middle school teams won the national grand prize for devising solutions to detecting sports concussions, reducing collisions with wildlife, and helping first responders treat opioid addicts.
The trio of winners – from Ashland Middle School in Ashland, Ky., Cavallini Middle School in Upper Saddle River, N.J., and Thomas Jefferson Middle School in Winston-Salem, N.C. – were each selected from among 255 state finalists (5 per state) in November, then from 51 state winners (including Washington, D.C.) in December, and then from among 10 national finalists in March, 2018. Watch the 2018 national finalists’ pitch. [YouTube 2:29:15]
Click HERE to learn more about how the contest works or click HERE to register by October 30, 2018.
When it comes to STEM education, engineering often is the “silent partner.”
High schools, for example, offer Advanced Placement courses in Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Calculus, and Computer Science. Yet engineering, if it even exists, typically falls into the extracurricular realm.
That’s about to change. For the past five years, an influential group of engineering deans led by the University of Maryland’s Darryll Pines has been laying the groundwork to develop a nationally recognized high-school engineering course – with more than 100 of them recently pledging to consider awarding college credit. Their effort just received a major boost from the National Science Foundation: A three-year, $4 million grant for a pilot program to create and test the effectiveness of a pre-college course on engineering principles and design.
“A standardized high school engineering course will help remove the mystery and democratize the learning and practice of engineering,”explained Dawn Tilbury, NSF’s assistant director for engineering, who calls access to undergraduate engineering education a key part of building America’s future STEM workforce.
The pilot program, entitled Engineering For US All (E4USA), is being led by the University of Maryland in partnership with Arizona State University, Morgan State University, and Virginia Tech, with Vanderbilt University evaluating the curriculum, student learning, and teacher training. Some 1,400 students in 40 high schools nationwide are expected to participate in testing the dual-credit course.
The pilot partners also will create and deploy a national professional development program that prepares teachers to teach the curriculum effectively and assess student design projects based on uniform standards. A web-based tool will help researchers track and evaluate the learning and practice of engineering concepts by teachers and students.
The pilot program grows out of a long-term effort, detailed in a March 2014 cover story in ASEE’s Prism magazine, to create an Advanced Placement Engineering course.
“The skills learned in engineering classrooms enable students from demographically and geographically diverse schools to not only become better prepared for the academic challenges within science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) courses, but to become better prepared for life,” said principal investigator Pines, dean of the University of Maryland’s A. James Clark School of Engineering.
Lesson adapted from Mineral Mayhem, created by the University of Minnesota and Purdue University’s EngrTEAMS: Engineering to Transform the Education of Analysis, Measurement, and Science in a Team-Based Targeted Mathematics-Science Partnership. Several hands-on activities were presented at ASEE’s 2017 Workshop on PreK-12 Engineering Education in Columbus, Ohio.
Mineral properties and identification tests provide the basis for an engineering-driven earth science unit based on the real-world premise of a cargo train derailing from its tracks. Students design a process to sort minerals that have been spilled into a lake, learning about the value of nonrenewable mineral resources while analyzing data and calculating costs, benefits, mass, volume, and density. Students also will strengthen communication skills by creating a presentation to explain their process and justify their decisions to a “client.”
Grade level: 5- 8
Time: Eight lessons over 14 50-minute class periods
Learning objectives
After doing this lesson, students should be able to:
Identify minerals and calculate density
Follow the engineering design process to devise a system, taking constraints into account
Understand linear relationships and slope
Use science and math to justify decisions
Communicate and explain their designs through a presentation
Learning standards
Next Generation Science Standards
5-PS1-3: Make observations and measurements to identify materials based on their properties.
MS-ETS1-1: Define the criteria and constraints of a design problem with sufficient precision to ensure a successful solution, taking into account relevant scientific principles and potential impacts on people and the natural environment that may limit possible solutions.
MS-ETS1-2: Evaluate competing design solutions using a systematic process to determine how well they meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.
MS-ETS1-3: Analyze data from tests to determine similarities and differences among several design solutions to identify the best characteristics of each that can be combined into a new solution to better meet the criteria for success.
MS-ETS1-4: Develop a model to generate data for iterative testing and modification of a proposed object, tool, or process such that an optimal design can be achieved.
Common Core State Standards – Mathematics
8.EE.B.5: Graph proportional relationships, interpreting the unit rate as the slope of the graph. Compare two different proportional relationships represented in different ways.
HSS.ID.C.7: Interpret the slope (rate of change) and the intercept (constant term) of a linear model in the context of the data.
Engineering connection
Mineral and metal mining contributes roughly $75 billion a year to the U.S. economy and directly employs hundreds of thousands of people. Engineers must figure out how to extract natural resources of different densities and value from the earth and safely transport them to where they’re needed, whether bauxite to aluminum smelters or soda ash to fertilizer factories.
Trains have long been used to ship minerals from mine to customer. But sometimes trains derail, spilling their precious cargo and endangering the environment along with the people who live near the accident site. Engineers can help companies find a cost-effective way to recover the minerals.
In this series of activities, your team will compete to design the best system for sorting and recovering different minerals that spilled into a lake. You will have identify the minerals, learn about their properties, and factor such trade-offs as revenue versus extraction costs into your proposal.
Lesson Summaries
Lesson 1: Off the Rails (Two 50-minute class periods)
Students are introduced to the engineering problem and design process. They read a client memo, which orients them to the problem of sorting minerals reclaimed from a lake after a train accident. They then will conduct research on the importance of minerals as a nonrenewable resource.
Lesson 2: Let’s Sort It Out (One 50-minute class period)
Working in groups of three, students sort a set of minerals according to their similarities and differences and identify possible ways of distinguishing between minerals. They will learn about the mineral identification methods used by geologists.
Lesson 3: Which Mineral is That? (Two 50-minute class periods)
Working in teams, students will work through a series of stations to measure the physical properties of minerals, learning about mineral hardness, streak, shape (cleavage/fracture), luster (metallic/glassy/dull), magnetism, and color.
Lesson 4: Discovering Density (Three 50-minute class periods)
Student teams investigate the relationship between mass and volume for a material. They will measure the mass and use water displacement to determine volume of mineral samples. They will create a scatterplot of mass vs. volume, draw a line of best fit, and calculate the slope of the line to
discover the density of the minerals. Students will also use the density formula to calculate densities of additional minerals.
Lesson 5: Go with the Flow (One 50-minute class period)
Students will revisit the criteria and constraints of their engineering design challenge. They will be introduced to the various machines that will be available for their use, how the machines work, and their associated costs. Students will be given a sample process flow diagram that shows a process
that could be used to sort a set of minerals. They will learn how to interpret the diagram, calculate the cost of the process, and determine the value of the minerals that are sorted. This process will not be optimized, so students will have an opportunity to investigate possible improvements.
Lesson 6: Engineering Design Challenge (Two 50-minute class periods)
Teams will be given the names of a new set of minerals to sort and identify. They will work together to create a process flow diagram that shows how the minerals could be sorted. They will justify each choice and evaluate their process design based on the cost of the machines they use and the value of the minerals they sort.
Lesson 7: Process Redesign (One 50-minute class period)
Student teams will find out that plastic and wood are also mixed in with the minerals being recovered from the lake. Given the new constraint, they will modify their previous process flow diagram to separate the plastic and wood from the minerals.
Lesson 8: Convincing the Client (Two 50-minute class periods)
Having optimized their process designs, teams will create presentations about their sorting processes. They will justify their choices and try to convince the client that their process is the best option. Students will also draft a memo to the client summarizing the design and their arguments in favor of it.
Materials
Per classroom:
Sheet of poster paper
Markers
White out
Engineering design process poster
Rag and water (activity #3)
2 sets of inch density cubes (activity #4)
2 sets of equal mass rods (activity #4)
1 set of 1000 plastic centimeter cubes (activity #4)
Set of 10-12 minerals. Any diverse mix of minerals will suffice, but a possible set could include quartz, feldspar, magnetite, calcite, talc, hornblende, muscovite, bauxite (see image), graphite, and pyrite. (activity 2 & 3)
Mineral identification testing materials; streak plates, glass plates, steel nails, pennies, magnets, hand lenses (activity #3)
Electronic balance (activity #4)
Pieces of aluminum gathered from home and school, varied sizes (activity #4)
5 pieces of graphite, varied sizes ranging from 1-50 g (activity #4)
5 pieces of magnetite, varied sizes ranging from 15-110 g (activity #4)
Mineral identification testing materials; streak plates, glass plates, steel nails, pennies, magnets, hand lenses (activity #3)
Metric ruler (activity #4)
Handful of centimeter cubes (activity #4)
Plastic beaker for holding water (activity #4)
Transparent plastic graduated cylinder – 25 mL, graduated to .5 mL (activity #4)
Transparent plastic graduated cylinder – 100 mL, graduated to 1 mL (activity #4)
1 overflow can (optional) (activity #4)
Glue or tape (activity 5,6,7)
4 sheets of poster paper (activity 5,6,7)
Samples of wood and plastic (activity 7)
Markers (activity 8)
Per student:
Pencil (activities #1-8)
Engineering notebook (activities #1-8)
Engineering design process slider (activities #1-8)
Students will be introduced to the engineering problem by reading a client memo, which orients them to the problem of sorting minerals. They will be
introduced to engineering and the engineering design process and will conduct research on the importance of minerals as a non-renewable resource.
Teacher Background • Teamwork: Students should be grouped strategically and may or may not be assigned jobs within their group. When forming student groups,
consider academic, language, and social needs. In place of strategic grouping, a random grouping can be substituted. Students will work in these
groups, or “teams” throughout the unit. Effective teamwork is essential in this unit as well as in engineering in general; however, this unit does not
provide specific support to develop those skills. If your students do not have experience with teamwork, it is highly recommended that you do some
targeted team-building activities prior to beginning this unit. • Engineering & Engineering Design: This lesson includes discussion about engineers and engineering. This may take more or less time depending on how much prior experience students have with engineering. The unit focuses on process engineering, where engineers design and optimize processes in various industries. In this unit, students will be designing a sorting process; they will not build or design any of the sorting machines. They are not responsible for removing the minerals from the lake. Additionally, the unit is also related to environmental engineering where engineers create solutions to mitigate human impact on the environment. • Engineering Notebook: Throughout the unit students will be recording information in an engineering notebook. This can be either a binder or
a bound notebook, but in either case students will need the notebook for all eight activities.
Before the Activity
Administer the Lesson 1 Content Pre-Assessment (word.doc) prior to starting this lesson, either on a different day or at the start of the class period.
Label all minerals using white out and a fine-tip permanent marker:
A: feldspar
B: talc
C: quartz
D: calcite
E: bauxite
F: magnetite
G: hornblende
H: muscovite
I: graphite
J: pyrite
Classroom Instruction
1. Introduce the unit. Say: We will be working on an engineering project related to helping sort minerals after a train derails.
2. Introduce the engineering design notebooks. Say: Engineers use notebooks to document their design process and keep notes. We will also be using Engineering Notebooks throughout our engineering challenge. Each day, you’ll use the notebooks to take notes and record what you are learning. In addition, there are questions that you’ll be asked to answer. teams. Each day, turn in your engineering notebooks before you leave class. Note:You can have your students write in their notebooks in two different colors – one for thoughts and prompts that are individual and one for thoughts and prompts that they discuss in their teams. This well help you assess the students ideas as well as help them recognize their own contributions and ideas. You also may want to have students complete a Notebook Cover and start a Table of Contents page. You may choose to have students tape/glue copies of the notebook prompts and/or the duplication masters into their notebooks.
3. Students individually complete notebook prompts about engineering. Have students individually answer the following prompts in their notebooks prior to teaching them anything else about the unit or about engineering. Tell students it is okay if they do not know very much about engineers or engineering – just have them answer the questions to the best of their ability.
• What do engineers do?
• How do engineers solve problems?
Have them write their response in their engineering notebook, then discuss their answers with their neighbors. Have students share their responses with the class, and use students’ responses to gauge their understanding of engineering and guide the following discussion. Encourage students to record new ideas in a different color in their notebooks.
4. Introduce the Engineering Design Process. Show Engineering Design Process graphic. Briefly describe each step. See the front matter for explanations of the steps of the engineering design process.
Introduction
1. Introduce the client and the problem. Explain that the students are going to be working in small groups to solve a problem being brought to them by the Rocky Rails transportation company. Divide students into groups of three. These groups should be their teams throughout the rest of the unit. Distribute copies of Client Letter 1 and direct students to read the letter. Note: For ELL students or students who struggle with reading, a graphic organizer or other reading support strategy will be useful.
2. Discuss ongoing communication with the client. Explain that engineers often need to ask questions to help clarify the problem and what they are being asked to do. Initial communications from the client may be missing important information that the client might not have known the engineers would need. Students will need to ask questions of the client to better understand their task. Throughout the unit, students will continue to communicate with the client on a regular basis to receive more information and provide progress updates.
Activity #1
1. Problem Scoping Part 1: Generating Questions. The problem statement given in Client Letter 1 purposefully does not provide all the information necessary to solve the problem. In this activity, students generate questions about the problem. This processes of generating questions for the client is an important skill on its own, but it also helps to ensure that the students fully understand the problem and their task. Once students have finished reading, have them generate questions to ask of the client.
• Have students respond to the following prompt in their notebooks: What questions do you want to ask the client?
• Ask students to share their questions. As students share, record these questions so that they are visible for all students to see.
• “The Client” should provide answers to these questions. Compile a list of questions for the client, which can then be answered with Client Letter 2. Some questions, however, may need to be answered right away by the teacher on behalf of the client.
• Students should be generating questions that 1) they need answered to solve the problem and 2) will help them understand the problem better. Students will probably have many relevant questions, but if they struggle you can give them an example. See Client Letter 2 Template for sample questions and strategies for answering the questions. (Also on p. 31 of the Mineral Mayhem lesson plan.)
• Once students have exhausted their questions, instruct them that you will share the questions with the client and get back to them with more information.
2. Engineering Design Process. Ask: Which phase of the engineering design process are we in right now? (Defining the problem) Say: We are getting ready to begin learning about minerals and why they are important.
Activity #2 Note: This activity can be done either before or after Problem Scoping Part 2.
3. What do you notice and wonder? Show students several minerals and tell them that these are minerals similar to the ones spilled by the Rocky Rails company. Ask: What do you notice about these minerals? What do you wonder about minerals? Allow students to share answers to both prompts.
4. Defining minerals. Explain that a mineral is defined as a naturally occurring, inorganic solid with a definite composition and crystal structure. This means that minerals are not living and that minerals of the same type have the same characteristics, including their structure and what they are
made of.
5. Researching mineral value, uses, and impacts. Tell students that they are going to work with their teams to research minerals and find out why they are important. There are three different research guides available for use, and each group member will be responsible for gathering information from one guide. Each individual will record their findings on the 1.d. Mineral Research worksheet (page 27 of the Mineral Mayhem lesson plan) or in their engineering notebooks, and the group will come together to share what they have found. These research guides constitute the minimum of what is necessary for the unit. Teachers are encouraged to supplement with resources suitable for their class.
• Distribute Non-Renewable Resources Guide, Mineral Uses Guide, and Environmental Impacts Guide. (Pages 28, 29, and 30 of the Mineral Mayhem lesson plan.)
6. Mineral research jigsaw. Provide students with time to view the resources, take notes, and share information with their teammates. Each student will only use one of the research guides. Individuals are responsible for sharing what they learned from their packet with their teammates.
Activity #3
7. Problem Scoping Part 2: Formulating the Problem Note: Prior to this, the teacher must prepare a new version of the Client Letter 2with answers to the students’ questions (see the 1.h. Client Letter 2 Template on page 32 of the Mineral Mayhem lesson).
• Share Client Letter 2: Have students read the response from the client. Note: Consider using visuals to support student understanding of the problem and their role in designing a sorting process. For example, images or videos of material being removed from a body of water would illustrate what will be done by others and not by the students.
• Individually: Based on the original client letter and the response letter, have students fill out their engineering notebooks with the prompts from the Problem Scoping Prompts master (or attach the worksheet in their notebooks).
• In Teams: Once all students have completed the prompts individually, have students discuss their answers with their team. Using a different colored pen or pencil, students should add to or change their answers based on the consensus within the group (or write in the team answers section). Make sure that students indicate which color represents individual and team work.
• Class Discussion: Call students back together for a whole group discussion. Ask: What is the client’s problem? (Minerals have fallen into a lake and must be sorted.) Ask: What is your role in solving the problem? (Learn how to identify minerals, create a process to sort the minerals, and justify why their process is the best option.) Ask: What questions do you still have about the situation or your role in addressing it? (Answers will vary – you can either answer these questions immediately or record them and include the answers in a later client letter.)
• As students share these answer and/or questions, use markers to record questions on an anchor chart to reference throughout the unit. Note: The purpose of an anchor chart is to make thinking visible to all in the classroom. Anchor charts are often made with poster paper and markers but could also be written on a whiteboard/chalkboard or created electronically. While the anchor chart can take multiple forms, it should be visible to students throughout the unit.
• Tell students that they will continue to get more information that may help answer their questions over the course of the next eight lessons.
8. Engineering Design Process. Ask: Which phase of the engineering design process are we in right now?
• Still defining the problem & gaining background information, learning about minerals and why they are important.
Closure
1. Restating the problem. Ask: What is the big problem in our engineering challenge? (Sorting minerals that have been recovered from a lake.)
2. Exit Slip—Reclaim vs. Replace. Direct students to respond to the following prompt in their engineering notebook: Write a claim with evidence
about why the company is recovering the minerals from the lake instead of just getting a new supply. Their responses to this prompt will indicate their
understanding that minerals are valuable and non-renewable resources. If student responses do not indicate this, the topic will need to be readdressed later.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant NSF DRL-1238140. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Lesson courtesy of TeachEngineering, a digital library curated by the Integrated Teaching and Learning program at the University of Colorado, Boulder’s College of Engineering.
Grade Level: 4 (3-5)
Time: Two 50 minute class periods
Summary: Students use their knowledge of tornadoes and damage. The students will work in groups to design a structure that will withstand and protect people from tornadoes. Each group will create a poster with the name of their engineering firm and a picture of their structure. Finally, each group will present their posters to the class.
Engineering Connection: Engineers strive to design structures that can endure tornadoes and protect people from violent wind forces. Following storms, they collect evidence to analyze tornado behavior and find better ways to economically build safer structures in high-risk areas. To test the strength and durability of materials and construction methods, engineers re-create tornado conditions. Creative engineering techniques to tornado-proof structures include improved roof shingles and roof design, well-secured house walls, an anchored foundation, and enhanced building materials.
Learning Objectives
After this activity, students should be able to:
Understand that tornadoes affect humans by causing property and loss of life.
Describe the damage to structures caused by tornadoes.
Understand how and why engineers design new and better buildings to withstand tornadoes.
Read and write for a variety of purposes and audiences.
Materials List
1 sheet of white poster board
Variety of crayons, markers, pencils
Introduction/Motivation
Some of the largest and most damaging tornadoes in history occurred in 1999 in Oklahoma and Kansas. Overall, these tornadoes caused 49 deaths and over $1 billion in damage. Tornadoes affect civil engineers the most because they design, build and maintain roads, railways and buildings. Engineers also collect evidence following storms and to help classify tornadoes, dispel tornado myths, and find better ways to safely build structures in high-tornado areas.
One danger of tornadoes is their ability to propel objects like missiles through the air. For example, wind engineers at Texas Tech University have a cannon designed specially to test the strength of various construction materials. The cannon fires boards and other objects at over 100 mph into different building materials to duplicate the effects of a tornado, such as wood splinters flying into a brick or other material building. The high winds blowing over roofs of buildings also cause a change in air pressure just above the roof. The pressure difference between inside and outside a building can cause the building to crumble or the roof to bulge up and be blown away in the wind.
Because buildings are not always built to resist a tornado it is important to understand tornado safety procedures. The first thing to do if you know there is a tornado coming is go and find shelter, immediately! Safe places include safe rooms, storm cellars, basements or interior rooms that have no windows. If you are in a mobile home, leave it! Tornadoes like to pick these up or flatten them! If you can, place a mattress, sleeping bag or heavy blanket over your body to protect yourself.
Now that you know everything– well not quite everything! — it is time to make a better house for a family that lives in Tornado Alley, the area of the United States where most tornadoes occur. Tornadoes can produce winds over 250 mph. According to NOAA, about 1,000 tornadoes are reported across the United States in an average year; resulting in 80 deaths and over 1,500 injuries. Approximately, 45 percent of these deaths were people living in mobile homes. With these statistics in mind, it is easy to see why it is important for engineers to build buildings that can withstand the tremendous forces of a tornado. Can you come up with a few ideas to design a house that will be super tornado proof?
Procedure
Go to the library and get books/reference materials on tornados
Gather activity materials
With the Students
1. Discuss how tornadoes can damage buildings; i.e., cause them to crumble, blow roofs off, or become damaged by flying debris. Lead a short brainstorming session with students asking them to think of ways a tornado might damage a house.
2. Tell students that they will be designing their own tornado-proof structure. Some ideas for students to use in their structures are: improve roof shingles and the roof design, devise better ways to secure the house walls, anchor the foundation, and use of better building materials. Students can think of any other creative ideas that they want. How about adding sails on a house and using it as a tornado boat! The objective is to be creative; there is no wrong answer.
3. Students should get into design teams of two to four.
4. They will use what they have learned about tornados in previous activities to design a poster of a house that will stand up to high wind speeds. This activity uses a lot of creativity, and there are no “wrong” designs. They can use ideas such as including a basement for protection during a tornado and coming up with better building designs.
5. Have student groups name their engineering firm (e.g., Wind-Proof Structural Engineers). The poster should have labels that briefly describe what is labeled and how it protects from tornados. Students can use the Tornado Safety Handout (attached) to get some ideas of things to add to a house.
6. Ask them to use the Fujita Tornado Damage Scale (attached) to rate what tornado their structure can withstand and include this rating on the poster.
7. The second class period is for presenting their building to their peers. Student presentations should include a general overview of their building, as well as a description of each labeled feature on their poster.
Troubleshooting Tips
If students are having trouble, refer them to damage pictures from references. What could they change? Also, the teacher may want to include a day in the library or an Internet search to gather more information for the activity.
Assessment
Pre-activity assessment
Brainstorming: As a class, have the students engage in open discussion. Remind students that in brainstorming, no idea or suggestion is “silly.” All ideas should be respectfully heard. Encourage wild ideas and discourage criticism of ideas. Have them raise their hands to respond. Write answers on the board. Ask the students: How might a tornado damage a house?
Activity embedded assessment
Posters: Have students create posters of their designs as directed in Procedures section.
Post activity assessment
Presentations: Have student teams present their building design posters to the class.
Pass the Buck: Have students brainstorm ideas to design a new school that will stand up to a tornado’s high-speed winds. First, assign one student in the group to be the recorder. Then have someone toss out an idea. Next, another person in the group provides an idea that builds on the first. Go around the group in this fashion until all students have put in enough ideas to put together a design. When they are done, have them share their ideas with the class.
Activity Extensions
Invite a structural or civil engineer to discuss building designs that help prevent loss during windstorms and tornadoes.
Student can build an interactive hurricane-proof house
Have students make 3-D models of their tornado proof homes.
Students can add safety measures for an entire community to their posters. Some suggestions include: building standards that all houses have a storm cellar or basement, community storm shelters for mobile home parks or public places, warning sirens, weather radios, community safety workshops, or banning mobile homes in Tornado Alley.
Crazy about autonomous cars – or driven mad by traffic? Iowa State University’s Institute for Transportation offers an engaging set of resources to learn about research and careers in the world of transportation.
Go! Magazine, a free, online e-zine in English and Spanish is aimed at teens. There’s also a blog on such topics as self-driving cars, a web-comic series, Dot’s Adventures in Transportation, interviews, scholarship database, and profiles of inventors like actress Hedy Lamarr, whose research led to the development of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) for navigation.
What: eCYBERMISSION web-based science fair and STEM mentoring
Grade level: Students in grades 6 to 9
Deadline: Register teams by December 19, 2018 and submit projects by February 27, 2019
Awards: Up to $9,000 per team member in U.S. Savings Bonds
You don’t have to be a college professor, or even an adult, for your research to make a difference. That’s the nub of eCYBERMISSION, a Web-based science fair for students in grades 6 to 9 sponsored by the U.S. Army Educational Outreach Program and administered by the National Science Teachers Association.
Consider one of last year’s winners, a team of four Naperville, Ill., sixth graders who worked with a parent-adviser to investigate the phosphate-laden fertilizer runoff causing algae blooms in local ponds. According to the Naperville Sun, the students planted tall fescue grass seed in trays of soil, each containing a different type of fertilizer – including a synthetic fertilizer used by the Naperville Park District and nearby golf courses. They presented their findings to water utility officials he city council this past February. Their conclusion: sheep dung might be a suitable alternative.
Other winning teams looked at ways to safely dispose of batteries and hunted for natural remedies for neurodegenerative diseases in cultures with lower occurrences of disorders.
The contest, which is aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards, asks teams of 3 to 4 students, along with an adult adviser, to identify a problem to solve in their community. Issues should fall into one of several broad categories, ranging from national security to alternative energy and the environment. From there, teams will prepare a “Mission Folder,” in which they use either scientific practices or engineering design process to answer the challenge. can be used to engage students in science and engineering practices.
Each member of the national finalist teams received a total of $4,000 in U.S. E.E. Savings Bonds (matured value), and each member of the national winning teams received a total of $9,000 U.S. E.E. Savings Bonds (matured value) each.
This year’s winning teams were chosen from 20 national finalist teams selected from 4,345 teams that entered the 2018 competition. Since the program’s inception in 2002, eCYBERMISSION has awarded state, regional and national competition winners more than $10 million in U.S. Savings Bonds.
Teams must register by December 19, 2018. (Early deadline is November 21, 2018. with teams eligible to win a free STEM kit.) Entries are due February 27, 2016. Build your team today!
Traffic jams, frustration, and parking tickets typically define the urban driving experience.
But every year on the third Friday in September – PARK(ing) Day, which falls on September 21 this year – artists, landscape architects, engineering students, kids, and activists around the world collaborate to transform curbside pavement into lounges, gardens, and other appealing spaces. The idea is to promote creativity, civic engagement, critical thinking, social interactions, and play through design.
PARK(ing) Day offers a great way for students to collaborate with professionals and community members to solve challenges around health and safety, better streets and neighborhoods, clean water, biodiversity, or climate change. Contact your local ASLA chapter to see how you can get involved and create your own temporary parklet. Post a picture of your installation in the social media contest with #ASLAPD18 for a chance to appear in Landscape Architecture Magazine.
PARK(ing) Day got its start in 2005, when San Francisco landscape architect and Rebar founder John Bela and urban designers Blaine Merker and Matthew Passmore went searching for “unscripted fragments” of land for a public art project. They were inspired by conceptual artist Gordon Matta Clark, who created installations in New York City’s tiny, irregularly shaped lots. In San Francisco, those bits of land could be rented by tossing a few coins in a meter. “We looked at the parking spaces and thought, ‘Oh wow, this is subsidized real estate,’” Bela told CityLab in 2017.
The idea quickly spread. In the past decade, parklots have housed a BBQ, free health clinic, classroom, solar panel demonstration, lemonade stand, finger-paining studio – even a wedding.
ASLA has other educational resources, such as downloadable activity books for kids interested in learning more about landscape architecture, engineering, environmental design, and drawing. For questions or more information, contact Discover@asla.org.
Like many public school districts, Boston’s faces a daily challenge: how to efficiently transport thousands of students to school on more than 600 buses without wasting money or learning time.
In 2017, however, officials turned to an unusual source for help: two Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineering and operations management Ph.D. students armed with a special algorithm, reports WBUR, Boston University’s public radio station.
Arthur Delarue and Sebastien Martin’s “Quantum,” developed with faculty adviser Dimitris Bertsimas, was the winning entry in the inaugural Boston Public Schools’ Transportation Challenge, a hackathon-style competition intended to generate ideas for streamlining routes, reducing emissions, and paring costs. The school system was spending $120 million a year to run its bus fleet – roughly 10 percent of total operating costs.
Team Quantum used traffic data from Google Maps to analyze patterns during morning and afternoon rush hours, then combined that data with information provided by Boston Public Schools on students and their assigned schools. Using mapping software and optimization techniques, the researchers devised an algorithm to reduce the number of bus routes, reconfigure bus stops, maximize the number of students riding each bus, and cut the amount of time that empty buses are on the road. They also took into account the fact that some students required wheelchair-friendly buses and others needed home pickup.
The result resembles a Google Maps for school buses. “Basically, we try to make math useful,” Delarue told WBUR.
Since winning the contest, four other school districts reportedly approached Team Quantum for help. The system has room for improvement, however. Despite MIT’s help, tardiness remained a problem for Boston’s school buses in 2018, the Boston Globe reported.
MIT isn’t the only engineering school getting involved with designing more efficient bus routes and safer roads. Live video from highways and busy intersections streams into the Traffic Lab in the University of Utah’s civil and environmental engineering department. providing researchers real-time data on safety as well as the impact of changes. One recent lesson: drivers were confused by newly introduced traffic lights with left-turn signals, and in some cases led to an increase rather than reduction in collisions.
A University of Pittsburgh student has studied the shuttle bus routes that enable students to get to class across the sprawling campus.
Meanwhile, artists, school officials, and other innovators are transforming school buses into mobile fab labs, greenhouses, lunchrooms, and other educationally useful vehicles, reports Edutopia. In San Antonio, the GeekBus offers 12 STEM programs on subjects from cybersecurity to structural engineering and robotics in a 40-foot makerspace.
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TeachEngineering lessoncontributed by the civil and environmental engineering department, Colorado School of Mines.
A companion lesson for grades 6-10 from the California Academy of Sciences, Building Better Buses, focuses on alternative fuels and improving energy efficiency in public bus systems. Or play “Gridlock Buster,” the University of Minnesota’s traffic engineering game, with related K-12 lessons.
Summary
In this series of four activities, students in grades 9 to 12 analyze real-world traffic data to evaluate the efficiency of a section of a public transit system and suggest design improvements. They then evaluate whether the changes make positive impacts on the system’s performance. Note: This lesson uses Denver’s FasTracks Living Lab, a web portal to interactive train traffic data for a major metropolitan city, so students need access to computers and the Internet. Click HERE for FasTracks main website.
Grade level: 9-12
Time: 1 hour, 45 minutes or two 50-minute class periods
Engineering Connection
Transportation engineers are responsible for designing and operating the systems that deliver people and goods, including rail, buses, airplanes, trucks, highways, and roads. They aim to design efficient systems that move people and goods quickly, safely, and cost-effectively.
Learning Objectives
After this lesson, students should be able to:
Suggest design improvements and evaluate whether the changes make positive impacts on the transit system performance.
Evaluate whether a particular section of a transit system is functioning in an efficient manner and whether it is meeting design requirements.
Work with real-world data, prepare and interpret graphs, analyze various scenarios, and develop creative solutions to existing problems.
Learning Standards
Next Generation Science Standards
Use a computer simulation to model the impact of proposed solutions to a complex real-world problem with numerous criteria and constraints on interactions within and between systems relevant to the problem.
International Engineering and Technology Educators Association
Optimization is an ongoing process or methodology of designing or making a product and is dependent on criteria and constraints.
Quality control is a planned process to ensure that a product, service, or system meets established criteria.
Requirements of a design, such as criteria, constraints, and efficiency, sometimes compete with each other.
Common Core Mathematics Standards
Measurement & Data: Weigh the possible outcomes of a decision by assigning probabilities to payoff values and finding expected values.
Introduction/Motivation
The west corridor of the Mass Transit Living Lab citywide transit system may not be operating as effectively as it could be. Passengers want to be reassured that taking the train to work is better for them than driving their cars.
Conversely, the owners of Living Lab (the city) want to be sure the trains are providing the required passenger service in a cost-effective manner.
The city wants to hire you to work as engineering teams to assess the west corridor and determine if it is meeting design requirements. And if not, the city wants your teams to suggest and test some improvements to fix the system.
As an introductory activity, have students brainstorm ideas. Ask students these questions:
What do you know about flow rates?
What are examples of everyday situations in which it would be important to understand flow rate?
Lesson Background and Concepts for Teachers
Design Criteria: Whenever engineers are hired to develop new products (such as voice recognition software), design and build new structures (such as the Chunnel) or improve the day-to-day operations of organizations or processes (such as the flow of people at DisneyWorld), the first thing they do is determine the criteria for a successful design.
FasTracks Living Lab: Teachers need to have a fair working knowledge of the Mass Transit Living Lab (http://www.teachengineering.org/livinglabs/fastracks/) before implementing this lesson in the classroom. The brief online user’s guide helps to provide a better understanding of the Lab; however, the best way to learn is just to poke around! We recommended that you work through this lesson and its activities before implementing them in your class.
Mass Transit Living Lab: Graphing the West Corridor Data – Students learn about graphical analysis of data to analyze flaws in a transit system’s design. They evaluate factors such as ride time, wait time, and percentage of train capacity.
Mass Transit Living Lab: Analyze the Data – Students quantitatively analyzing real-world transit data, identifying problems with the current design based upon their earlier observations and experiences in activities 1 and 2.
Mass Transit Living Lab: Improve the System – Students identify possible solutions to the design problems that the existing west corridor faces, combining what they have learned from the three previous activities to come up with possible solutions.
Watch how school bus routes are planned in St. Cloud, Minnesota:
Lesson Closure
A great way to end this lesson is to have a class discussion about 1) what was wrong with the west corridor operation, and 2) the various recommendations of the different teams. It is beneficial to have peer-review and constructive criticism of student work – it is instant feedback and from a source other than the teacher.
Assessment
Grade the intermediate homework, final presentations or final reports. In addition, give students a scenario in which traffic demand increases substantially (such as before or after a Sunday downtown football game) and ask them to design changes to the system.
Lesson Extension Activities
The extensions are limitless. Have students perform similar analyses for other trains, stations, and routes, or collect data on school bus routes and recommend improvements.
Other Related Information
This lesson is designed around the Mass Transit Living Lab, a real-time simulation of FasTracks—a real, high-speed rail transit system in metropolitan Denver, Colorado, as an example for analyzing data about how a light rail system works.
Companion lesson (Grades 6-10): Building Better Buses, from the California Academy of Sciences, focuses on alternative fuels and improving energy efficiency in public bus systems.
Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, Colorado School of Mines
Acknowledgements
This curriculum was created with support from the National Science Foundation. However, these contents do not necessarily represent the policies of the National Science Foundation, and you should not assume endorsement by the federal government.
Last year, three middle school teams won the national grand prize for devising solutions to detecting sports concussions, reducing collisions with wildlife, and helping first responders treat opioid addicts.
