Engineering is Everywhere Vertical Farms curriculum unit is part of a series of engineering design activities for use in middle school enrichment and after-school programs developed by the Museum of Science, Boston’s Engineering is Elementary. Click HERE for the teacher’s guide. [PDF]

Summary

Students explore food production problems related to population growth and then engineer a model vertical farm as a potential solution in a fictional community, Greentown, culminating with a presentation to the imaginary city’s “legislators.” Because vertical farms are still a new concept with only a few prototype examples worldwide, exploring vertical farms provides youths with a chance to imagine what the future could bring.

Grade level: 6-8

Time: 7 to 8 hours for all six hour-long activities; 2 to 3 hours for the vertical farm design project.

Learning objectives

After doing these activities, participants should be able to:

• Understand the engineering design process and role of engineers in developing products and processes that benefit society.
• Understand that technology is anything designed by people to help solve a problem.
• Design, build, test, and improve a technology to solve a problem.  

Learning Standards

Though designed for out-of-school time, these activities cover a number of academic standards.

Next Generation Science Standards

Middle School Physical Science

• MS-PS4-2 Develop and use a model to describe that waves are reflected, absorbed, or transmitted through various objects.
• Middle School Life Science
  MS-LS1-6 Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for the role of photosynthesis in the cycling of matter and flow of energy into and out of organisms.
  MS-LS2-5 Evaluate competing design solutions for maintaining biodiversity and ecosystem services.

Middle School Earth and Space Sciences

• MS-ESS3-3 Apply scientific principles to design a method for monitoring and minimizing a human impact on the environment.
• MS-ESS3-4 Construct an argument supported by evidence for how increases in human population and per-capita consumption of natural resources impact Earth’s systems.

Middle School Engineering and Technology

• 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.

21st-century Skills

• Collaboration
• Creativity
• Critical thinking

Motivation/Engineering Challenge

Greentown’s population has been growing at an increasingly fast rate and local farmers are having a hard time producing the fresh food that the residents need. Like engineers, you will work in groups to explore how food production in Greentown has changed with the increasing population.

Materials  

For the whole group

• Engineering Design Process poster
• colored markers
• 1 paper towel roll
• 1 sticky notepad
• 1 utility knife (for educator use)
• 1 light and moisture meter
• 2 measuring tapes
• 2 rolls of duct tape
• 2 rolls of masking tape
• 4 pitchers of water

For each group of 3

• 1 plastic aquarium plant
• 1 flashlight
• 1 pair of scissors
• 1 set of Food Production Cards
• 1 room (storage cube) created during previous lesson

For each youth

• Engineering Notebook [ENGLISH PDF]
• Engineering Notebook [SPANISH PDF]

For Materials Store

• 1 roll of aluminum foil
• 1 package of modeling clay
• 8 water pumps
• 12 mirrors
• 12 tubing connectors
• 12 tubing splitters
• 16 aluminum trays
• 16 deli containers, 16 oz.
• 16 lbs. soil
• 80 ft. of vinyl tubing, 1/4 in.
• 100 craft sticks
• 100 pipe cleaners

Procedure

1. Post the Engineering Design Process poster.
2. Gather about 16 lbs. of soil. If you are using the aquarium plants, it does not have to be soil specific for growing plants.
3. Lay out supplies for the Materials Store.
4. Set aside materials for each group.
5. Review Materials Store Extra Challenge (p. 47 in the guide) and decide whether you would like to include a budget requirement for your group.

Introduction (5 min)

1. Tell youth that they are now ready to begin their final design challenge. Have them form groups of 3 that they will remain in for the rest of the unit and turn to The Challenge, p. 16 in their Engineering Notebooks. [Spanish]
2. Review the challenge and the criteria and constraints as a group, as well as the materials they will have available. Ask: What is the Greentown City Council asking us to engineer? Why? A model of a vertical farm that can supply food to the citizens of Greentown.
3. Explain that each group will make one room of the vertical farm, and those rooms will be combined to form a vertical farm structure. This design will be presented during the City Council Presentation, the last activity of the unit.

Greentown’s Vertical Farm (15 min)

1. 1. Explain that the whole group will now decide how the rooms of the vertical farm will be arranged to form one complete vertical farm building. Let youth know that the building must be at least three rooms high, as stated by Greentown’s City Council.
   2. Give each group a sticky note and have them write their names on it. This will represent their room of the vertical farm.
   3. As a group, have youth decide how the rooms will be stacked by rearranging the sticky notes until an agreement is reached. When the arrangement is finalized, tape the notes together and display them somewhere in the classroom where youth can refer back to them.
   4. Have youth stack their empty rooms in the arrangement they decided upon. They should not attach them yet. Ask:
      • What do you notice about the location of your room?
      • Where can light enter your room?
      • Where will your water reservoir be located? How
      much tubing will you need to reach your water reservoir?
   5. Tell youth that they will now decide where the light source (flashlight) will be located. The flashlight must be located on the outside of the room with the light projecting in. Each group should decide where the light would likely be coming from given their room’s position. Rooms on the top level may have light coming in from the top or sides, while rooms in the first two layers can only have light coming in from the sides.
   6. Give each group a pipe cleaner. Tell groups to decide where their light source will be located. They should form a circle out of the pipe cleaner and tape it to the location where the flashlight will be held. This will ensure that the flashlight will be tested at the same position throughout the remainder of the challenge.

Imagine and Plan (10 min)

1. Have youth read through Test, p. 18 in their Engineering Notebooks, to review how their models will be tested.
2. Let youth know that today they will work in their groups to imagine, plan, and create their room of the model vertical farm for Greentown. They can visually assess how their systems are working as they create, but they will officially test the light and water systems in the next activity.
3. Show groups the materials they will have available for their designs.
4. Give group 5 minutes to imagine and plan their designs. Let youth know that they can plan their vertical farm designs on Plan, p. 17 in their Engineering Notebooks. [Spanish version]
5. As groups are finalizing their plans, circulate and ask:

• How did you decide on this design and these materials?
• What do you think will work well about your design?

Create (25 minutes) 

1. Have groups visit the Materials Store to collect their supplies.
2. As groups work, rotate among them, encouraging what they are doing and asking them to explain how they are engineering. Ask questions like:
• Which parts of your design are working well?
• What aspects of your design have you modified since you started? Why?
• What do you predict will happen when you test your design?
3. If groups would like an additional challenge, encourage them to use one or multiple Food Production Cards from Prep Activity 2 and place them somewhere in their vertical farm room. They should make sure that these model plants also receive adequate light.
4. When time is up, have youth clean up their materials and tell them that they will test their designs in the next activity.

Reflect (5 minutes)

1. Gather youth around the Engineering Design Process poster. Point to each step of the Engineering Design Process and ask:
• How did you use this step today? We planned, created, and tested designs, and made improvements.
2. Let youth know that next time they will combine the rooms of the vertical farm to create the model for Greentown. Ask:
• How did the original design you planned change as you were creating your model vertical farm room?
• What challenges do you think you will face when combining multiple systems into a single vertical farm model? There is limited space; it can get
complicated; the more connections you make, the greater chance there is for something to go wrong.
• Why do you think using models before building is helpful for engineers? Encourage all answers. Youth may say that it saves materials and time, the model can help you see potential problems, designs need to be approved by the client, etc.

Troubleshooting tips

• The vertical farm building should be no more than four rooms tall to prevent the structure from tipping over.
• If you feel that it will be overwhelming for your group to have access to all of the materials during this lesson, consider holding back the soil and water until the next activity.
• If groups have access to both soil and water, their soil may become saturated with water as they design and test. Have dry soil available to replace wet soil. Spread out wet soil so that it can dry and be reused during the next activity.

Activity scaling

• For an additional challenge, consider adding a budget. Suggestions can be found on p. 47. If using the budget, teams should add the cost of the materials to their materials list.

Resources

To see an example of a vertical farm that was built within an existing building, show them the Plant, a vertical farm in Chicago that was built in
what used to be a pork packing facility: http://www.plantchicago.com/

Engineering an Indoor Vertical Garden. Tufts University’s Center for Engineering Education Outreach has a community-based engineering design initiative that includes a learning module using the engineering design process to build a vertical garden, including watering system.

Room to Grow. Cover story on vertical farming that ran in the March/April 2018 issue of ASEE’s Prism magazine. [PDF]

Examples of vertical gardens:

Mirai in Tokyo ranks as the world’s largest indoor farm; the former Sony semiconductor factory ships out 10,000 heads of lettuce a day.

Tokyo’s Pasona (photo, below) refurbished a 50-year-old building, with one fifth of its 215,000 square feet devoted to growing fruits, vegetables, and rice.

In the crowded city-state of Singapore, Sky Greens claims to be the world’s first low-carbon, hydraulic-driven vertical farm.

In Linköping, Sweden, meanwhile, a firm called Plantagon says it plans to erect a 16-story “plantscraper,” with offices on one side and on the other, a vertical farm in which crops will be grown hydroponically using both LEDs and natural light.

In the United States, one of the fastest-growing ventures is AeroFarms, based in Newark, N.J.

Vertical Harvest of Jackson in Jackson, Wyo., is one of the world’s first vertical greenhouses. Located on a sliver of vacant land next to a parking garage, the 13,500-square-foot, three-story facility uses a tenth of an acre to grow produce equivalent to five acres of traditional agriculture and supplies it fresh to local grocery stores and restaurants. 

Across the state in Laramie, entrepreneur Nate Storey launched the vertical farm Bright Agrotech after earning an agronomy doctorate from the University of Wyoming. His company has since been acquired by a Silicon Valley firm, Plenty.

Within universities, research on vertical farming falls under controlled environment agriculture (CEA), a term that encompasses both greenhouse produce and plant factory and warehouse-style production. The University of Arizona’s Controlled Environment Agriculture Center (UA-CEAC) recently launched a new two-floor vertical farm known as the UAgFarm for research and to provide experiential educational opportunities for students and educate growers and the public on indoor growing systems. It occupies 750-square-feet with two individually controlled chambers, one on each floor, with two racks, each with two layers of floating, raft-based hydroponic systems. Undergraduate and graduate engineering students designed the systems for it. Other colleges involved with CEA and vertical farming include Cornell.

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A solar-powered, high-flying hero named Heliora and a peppy polymer that transforms into a cell-size, chain-welding warrior to battle an antibiotic-resistant superbug are among the winners of 2018  Generation Nano challenge.

Sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), the competition asked middle and high school students to create comics or short videos about a science-powered superhero that tackles society’s problems, such as fighting disease or solving crimes.

Entries were judged on use of science and technology, creativity, and artistic or technical quality.

High school winners

• First Place
  Joy from St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Potomac, Maryland for “Heliora.”
• Second Place
  Anna and Emily from Clarke County High School in Berryville, Virginia for “Hemea.”
• Honorable Mentions
  Nicole from Jericho High School in Jericho, New York for “Vilmaris.”
  Aisha, Saisanjana and Vidhya from East Brunswick High School in East Brunswick, New Jersey for “Dr. A.”

Middle school winners

• First Place
  Hannah from Roberto Clemente Middle School in Germantown, Maryland for “Peppy T. Polymer.”
• Second Place
  Kathryn from Robert Cook Edwards Middle School in Clemson, South Carolina for “Doctor DNA.”
  Julie from Pennichuck Middle School in Nashua, New Hampshire, for “Estron.”
• Honorable Mentions
  Michelle and Gina from Roberto Clemente Middle School in Germantown, Maryland for “Bellator.”
  Dhruv and Priya from Takoma Park Middle School in Takoma Park, Maryland for “HydroPIT.”

Each first-place winner will exhibit their superhero at the 2018 USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington, D.C., April 6-8, 2018. The festival, the only national science festival, features speeches by inspirational scientists, exhibits from some of the biggest names in STEM, and interactive and informative demonstrations.

Generation Nano also recognized two teachers this year for playing pivotal roles in mentoring young STEM artists.

• Lauren Cook from St. Andrew’s Episcopal School worked with Joy, the high school first-place winner.
• James Dempsey from Roberto Clemente Middle School worked with Hannah, the middle school first-place winner.

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Boyan Slat discovered the problem of plastic pollution while diving in Greece during a high school vacation. “I came across more plastic bags than fish,” he recalls in a wildly popular 2012 TED Talk.

Blat returned home and began researching solutions. Most of the ideas involved using nets to filter plastic from the water, but turtles and other sea life got trapped as well. He dropped out of college, where he was majoring in aerospace engineering, to devote himself to finding a better

way to clean up the Great Pacific Garbage Dump. Of some 300 companies he contacted seeking support, only one replied, calling it “a terrible idea.”

The TED Talk proved a turning point for the teenager. Fame and funding for his novel idea for a microplastic-waste-trapping boom soon followed,  In 2014, Blat founded the Ocean Cleanup foundation to turn his invention into a reality. His foundation employs 70 people and has received $31.5 million in investment, including from such big-deal investors as PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel.

In 2018, six years after that fateful dive and following a two-year feasibility study, Slat, 23, is ready to deploy his floating dustpans – basically a line of massive (up to 1.2 miles long) booms designed to act like a mini-coastline, passively gathering plastic waste and pulling it to the center with the tug of wind and tide. A boat would collect the garbage every month or so.

A prototype, dubbed Boomy McBoomface, had a promising trial run in the North Sea, the Independent reports. And a 400-foot boom will soon deploy near San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. Next up: The Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch. Slat estimates his Ocean Cleanup rig will collect about 50 percent of the huge pool of pulverized plastic in just five years (his previous estimate was that he would be able to collect 42 percent of it over 10 years), reports MNN.

Slat used the engineering design process to improve on his original concept. Instead of attaching the booms to the ocean floor, they will be held in place by sea anchors floating deep below.

Meanwhile, in Baltimore, Md., Mr. Trash Wheel (photo, above) – the world’s first solar- and hydro-powered trash interceptor – has been plying the Jones Falls river, trapping plastic before it reaches the scenic Inner Harbor and Chesapeake Bay, reports the Journal of Ocean Technology. The inventor, a local man named John Kellett, was tired of seeing trash flow into the Baltimore harbor during rainstorms. His solution: A 14-foot steel water wheel powered by the current of the river. Instead of powering a mill, however, the water wheel powers a rake and conveyor system that pulls floating litter -anything from a cigarette butt to a tree – and  from the river and deposits it into a dumpster barge. Mr. Trash Wheel also has an array of thirty solar panels to power pumps that pump water onto the wheel so that the machine can continue to operate even when the current of the river is slow.

Even if you’re not an inventor, the average person can help tackle the ocean plastic problem. Plastic drinking straws are a top contributor to the 8 million tons of plastic waste that flows into the ocean each year, estimates the National Geographic. That has sparked campaigns to ban or tax them.

Other efforts focus on changing consumer behavior. The One Less Straw Pledge, founded by Carter and Olivia Ries back in 2009 when they were 8.5 and 7 years old, urges people to either forego plastic drinking straws or opt for reusable or paper versions. Reusable cloth shopping bags have proliferated in cities such as Washington, D.C., which taxes plastic grocery bags. Thirsty? Fill your reusable water bottle instead of reaching for the plastic. Check out the World Oceans Day (June 8, 2018) resources for tackling plastic pollution.

Then there are clean-up days. Every year, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Pacific Region (video, above) hauls tons of marine debris from the azure coastlines of Hawaii and various atolls, where it entangles and kills albatross, sea turtles, and other wildlife.

It may take a major shift in culture to halt the plastics problem where it starts: with people tossing trash upstream. Indonesia recently deployed troops to clean up a canal so clogged with plastic debris that it blocked a major tributary, the BBC reports. The coast where the canal disgorged its contents was in even worse shape, with old water bottles, plastic bags, and other junk stretching for hundreds of meters.

Even a sudden move toward widespread recycling may not affect the size of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, however. Most of the plastic comes from abandoned fishing gear, reports the National Geographic.

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The road to a greener future may start in northwest England’s Cumbria county, where plastic litter is turning up in an unusual new place: street pavements.

In a trial run, a section of the A6 near Calthwaite was resurfaced with asphalt that incorporated a material made from recycled plastic developed by Scotland-based start-up MacRebur Plastics Road Company. The material, called MR6, acts like a superglue. When mixed with asphalt, its pellets create a more durable surface that also is cheaper to build than traditional roads. What’s more, MR6 replaces the need to use bitumen, an oil-based substance that makes up roughly 10 percent of a road’s total building materials, according to Inhabitat. (Rock, sand, and limestone constitute the rest.)

The company says roads constructed with MR6 are less likely prone to cracking and potholes, reducing maintenance costs. They also may reduce tire resistance, which could help improve fuel economy.

The first stretch of MR6-infused pavement road reportedly was the driveway of MacRebur’s founding engineer, Toby McCartney – pictured above.

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Sensors are in everything from smart phones to corn fields. When used in hands-on environmental research projects, they also serve as an empowering and engaging way for students to develop a variety of interdisciplinary science, technology, engineering, and math skills.

SENSE IT, the Student Enabled Network of Sensors for the Environment using Innovative Technology, is a free, four-module curriculum that can be inserted into any standard STEM course (mathematics, chemistry, general science, physics, environmental science and computer science) while meeting national education standards. It grew out of National Science Foundation-funded research conducted by ASEE member Liesl Hotaling, then an educator in the University of South Florida’s marine biology department. Her findings, published in the summer 2012 issue of Advances in Engineering Education, documented increases in academic performance of both whiz kids and struggling high school students who built and deployed sensors to monitor the health of their local river.

Students also gain confidence and technical skills learning how to solder and debug circuits, write programs to calibrate the sensors, and log results. Read more about the program HERE.

SENSE IT’s four project-based modules challenge students to construct and deploy sensors and interpret data from their own sensor network for monitoring water quality. Each module – on sensor development, sensor deployment and data gathering, water quality investigation, and sharing data across observatories – requires three to five 45-minute class periods. Resources include links to the Hudson River Environmental Conditions Observing System data and lessons.

Click HERE for the SENSE IT curriculum.

Liesl Hotaling’s research, SENSE IT: Teaching STEM to Middle and High School Students Through the Design, Construction, and Deployment of Water Quality Sensors, was published in the Summer 2012 Advances in Engineering Education. A one-page excerpt ran in ASEE’s Prism magazine in summer 2013.

The Water Quality Project, Leaders High School, Brooklyn, NY

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Indoor ‘vertical farming’ could be an answer to urban food needs and shrinking agricultural space – if cost and energy obstacles can be overcome.

Excerpted from Tom Gibson’s cover story in the March/April 2018 issue of ASEE’s Prism magazine. Click HERE for the full article.

In 1999, Dickson Despommier, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University’s School of Public Health, faced a disappointed group of students. Thinking rooftop gardens might meet the food needs of the world’s rapidly growing urban populations, they had looked into what proportion of Manhattan residents could be fed that way. Answer: 2 percent.

“They said, ‘We’re doomed,’ ” Despommier recounts in a documentary by the Dutch broadcaster VPRO. “I said, ‘What if you took your good idea and made it a better idea by moving a rooftop garden in the building itself?’ ”

With land and water becoming scarce, and rising concern over pesticide and fertilizer use, energy and pollution costs, and transportation, new kinds of agriculture are gaining attention. Among them: A three-dimensional framework in a controlled indoor environment. Coining the term “vertical farm,” Despommier, now professor emeritus, continued to engage students with the idea and in 2010 turned it into a book, The Vertical Farm: Feeding the World in the 21st Century.

Emerging field

The concept is a long way from displacing conventional agriculture, but it has inspired research, start-ups, and pilot projects in the United States, Europe, and Asia, along with imaginative artists’ renderings. “It’s still very much an emerging field where there are not that many commercial operations, especially on a larger scale,” says Neil Mattson, associate professor at Cornell University in the Horticulture Section of the School of Integrative Plant Science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

With growing consumer demand for locally grown produce, vertical farming draws on specialists in the natural sciences, but also engineers and computer and data scientists. “We need engineers and plant scientists who are excited about this,” enthuses Murat Kacira, (photo, right) a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering at the University of Arizona, who worked with a local start-up to turn part of the ill-fated Biosphere into a community vertical farm. “For certain high-value crops and localities and climates, this technology might be economical now. But there is room for improving these vertical farming systems, especially the engineering, because the costs are still really high to operate these systems.”

Global pioneers

Overseas, Japan makes an ideal candidate for vertical farming because its terrain is 75 percent mountains, with the bulk of the country’s population concentrated in the remaining 25 percent. Mirai in Tokyo ranks as the world’s largest indoor farm; the former Sony semiconductor factory ships out 10,000 heads of lettuce a day. In the same city, the human resources company Pasona (photo, below) refurbished a 50-year-old building, with one fifth of its 215,000 square feet devoted to growing fruits, vegetables, and rice, according to the online publication Inhabitat. In the crowded city-state of Singapore, Sky Greens claims to be the world’s first low-carbon, hydraulic-driven vertical farm.

In Linköping, Sweden, meanwhile, a firm called Plantagon says it plans to erect a 16-story “plantscraper,” with offices on one side and on the other, a vertical farm in which crops will be grown hydroponically using both LEDs and natural light. The firm recently opened a 65,000-square-foot farm in the basement of a Stockholm office building, according to Huffington Post.

In the United States, one of the fastest-growing ventures is AeroFarms, based in Newark, N.J. The company recently started its ninth farm, billed as the world’s largest vertical farm, at its new global headquarters, and it has others in development in multiple U.S. states and on four continents. (photo, below right)

Vertical Harvest of Jackson in Jackson, Wyo., is one of the world’s first vertical greenhouses. Located on a sliver of vacant land next to a parking garage, the 13,500-square-foot, three-story facility uses a tenth of an acre to grow produce equivalent to five acres of traditional agriculture and supplies it fresh to local grocery stores and restaurants. The top floor grows tomatoes, which require lots of light, while the lower two layers have rotating shelves of leafy greens that get sunlight through windows and artificial light when they’re rotated farther into the building. Working with the University of Wyoming, Vertical Harvest produces 100,000 pounds of produce each year. Racks of plants extend through the floors, so employees can tend to them from each floor. 

Across the state in Laramie, entrepreneur Nate Storey launched the vertical farm Bright Agrotech after earning an agronomy doctorate from the University of Wyoming. His company has since been acquired by a Silicon Valley firm, Plenty. (Motto: Can Lettuce Make You Happy?)

Within universities, research on vertical farming falls under controlled environment agriculture (CEA), a term that encompasses both greenhouse produce and plant factory and warehouse-style production. The University of Arizona’s Controlled Environment Agriculture Center (UA-CEAC) recently launched a new two-floor vertical farm known as the UAgFarm for research and to provide experiential educational opportunities for students and educate growers and the public on indoor growing systems. It occupies 750-square-feet with two individually controlled chambers, one on each floor, with two racks, each with two layers of floating, raft-based hydroponic systems. Undergraduate and graduate engineering students designed the systems for it. Other colleges involved with CEA and vertical farming include Cornell, the University of Florida, Ohio State, Michigan State, North Carolina State, MIT, and Purdue.

Based in Milton, Pa., Tom Gibson, P.E., is a consulting mechanical engineer specializing in machine design and green building and a freelance writer specializing in engineering, technology, and sustainability. He publishes Progressive Engineer, an online magazine and information source (www.ProgressiveEngineer.com).

This post was excerpted from the March 2018 cover story of ASEE’s Prism magazine. Click HERE to read the full article [PDF]. 

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TeachEngineering lesson contributed by the National Science Foundation GK-12 and Research Experience for Teachers (RET) Programs, University of Houston. Combine with the companion activity/field trip Where are the Plastics Near Me? to develop students’ ability to create and analyze data sets while building geography and mapping skills. 

Rapid Trash Assessment, from the California Academy of Sciences, includes a design challenge for reducing marine plastic for 4-12th graders. Click HERE for PDF.

Summary

Students learn about the Great Pacific garbage patch, research the impact of plastics pollution on oceans, and present that information as a short, eye-catching newsletter suitable to hand out to fast-food restaurant customers.

Grade level: 7-9

Time: 165 minutes (three 55-minute classes)

Engineering Connection

Engineers are often relied upon to be technical experts for their project managers, the public at large, and government officials. The background knowledge they acquire and the type of thinking they use is essential to understanding issues that affect many people and have many technical facets and potential consequences. In this activity, students learn how to gather information about a topic of importance and reliably and honestly inform others so that decision making is improved. This experience exposes students to a real-life engineering challenge that gives them a concrete experience of what engineering is like and makes them more literate in understanding engineering-related issues in their community and world.

Learning Objectives

After this activity, students should be able to:

• Articulate in verbal and in written form some basic information about the Great Pacific garbage patch (GPGP).
• Express and support an opinion about the conditions, causes, or solutions for the GPGP.
• Demonstrate the skill of gathering online (or other) sources of information on the GPGP without plagiarizing either in the form of 1) directly copying text from articles (that is, improper paraphrasing) or 2) providing imcorrect or absent citations.
• Mix pictures and explanatory text into a short simple format that is both eye-catching and informative while explaining the GPGP environmental impacts and posing environmental engineering solutions to the problem.

Learning Standards

Next Generation Science Standards

Construct an argument supported by evidence for how increases in human population and per capita consumption of natural resources impact Earth’s systems.

International Technology and Engineering Educators Association

• The management of waste produced by technological systems is an important societal issue.
• Technology, by itself, is neither good nor bad, but decisions about the use of products and systems can result in desirable or undesirable consequences.

Common Core Literacy Standards: Writing

Draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support analysis, reflection, and research. [Grade 7-9]

Gather relevant information from multiple print and digital sources, using search terms effectively; assess the credibility and accuracy of each source; and quote or paraphrase the data and conclusions of others while avoiding plagiarism and following a standard format for citation. [Grades 8]

Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive topics or texts, using valid reasoning and relevant and sufficient evidence. [Grades 9-10]

Write informative/explanatory texts to examine and convey complex ideas, concepts, and information clearly and accurately through the effective selection, organization, and analysis of content. [Grades 9-10]

Materials

Each group needs:

• Computer with Microsoft Word (or other word processing software) and an Internet connection
• Paper or note cards to organize thoughts and ideas (optional)

Introduction/Motivation

The Great Pacific garbage patch (GPGP) is a large and far-reaching modern environmental issue related to many different scientific phenomena and having multiple human at actors. You’ve had some good exposure to the GPGP through the lesson, but you might now be wondering, “What can I do about it?” One of the more important things that you can do for this issue or any engineering-science-technology issue is to create awareness. That’s exactly what has already happened to you through learning about the GPGP. Now you will learn still more about the GPGP and communicate it to a wider audience.

Pretend for a moment that you would like to get the word out at places that use and dispense plastics to the average consumer. Let’s use the fast food chain McDonald’s as our example, though many businesses commonly dispense plastic products to consumers, including grocery stores, sit-down restaurants, cellphone stores, large-scale electronics vendors, department stores. This restaurant is one important distribution point for plastics that can end up in the GPGP because 1) many people and many different kinds of people frequent McDonald’s, 2) plastics are used in many of the food products dispensed (such as straws, burger boxes, cutlery), 3) many of these plastics are not bioplastics or biodegradable, and 4) these plastics are often found as trash in visible locations such as streams, lakes and docks–places, from which they are likely to gradually make their way to the GPGP.

If you wanted to cause a stir, you could stand up on a chair in McDonald’s and start speaking aloud to customers about their plastics and the GPGP. It is, however, unlikely that this will be effective. So you will do something more subtle. You will create a one-page newsletter that is short, quick to get someone’s attention, and still informative about the important issues surrounding the GPGP. It will also pose possible environmental engineering solutions to the problem. Think of the newsletter as something that you would offer to customers at McDonald’s as they walk out of the restaurant.

As you write your newsletter, keep a few concerns in mind. The first is accuracy and usefulness of information, and the second is plagiarism. Whenever you read something on the Internet, a newspaper, a flier etc., you hope that what you are reading is useful and accurate. You want it to be useful because you are spending your time reading and understanding it, and you want it be accurate because you do not want to learn information that is wrong. So as you begin to read further online information about the GPGP, be sure that you focus on understanding what you are reading. Don’t just find clever pictures, and don’t just try and find large quantities of information. If you read an article, or a section of the article, write out a summary or a few bullet points of what you have read. Perhaps you could simply write the parts that are most interesting and useful to you? As you do this, strive to not write word-for-word what you are reading. Instead write it in your own words. This helps to ensure that you actually understand what you are reading.

A second concern is plagiarism. Plagiarism is defined as “to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own: use (another’s production) without crediting the source .” [1] The most obvious form of plagiarism is to use someone’s words and/or ideas without giving credit. A common way of running into this error when using online information is to directly copy and paste a section of text from an online source. Because it is so quick and easy to do this, you may find that you wish to do it to save time. But – you cannot do this! You have two options in this situation. The best option in most circumstances is to take the ideas from what is being said (that is, summarize it or write it out in bullet form as stated earlier) and write it out in your own words. Then make note of the source because you will need to list it at the end of your newsletter. The second option you have, which should be used sparingly, is to copy the words exactly but set them off in quotation (“_____”) marks. If y ou do this, you still need to cite the author and source of the information at the end of your newsletter. A second form of plagiarism is to improperly give credit to some information. If the wrong source is given or the source is incomplete, then this is problematic. The goal of citing any information is so that a reader is able is able to go back and find exactly what you found if they want to check to make sure what you have written is accurate. Remember that in this activity you want to inform people of the GPGP and how plastics relate to it. Some of them may not believe you and may be skeptical. So you need to be sure you have referenced your information correctly so that you have a better chance of convincing them. As a general rule, if you are not sure if you need to cite something, then cite it anyway. Too much citation won’t hurt.

Here are the specific requirements of your newsletter for you to think about as you plan and write.

It needs to have the following important elements.

Newsletter Title

Something that will catch the attention of a person you hand it to outside of McDonald’s. A good example might be something like, “How did plastic burger boxes end up in the middle of the Pacific Ocean?” Something more generic like “Plastic Garbage” may not be as effective but is still okay.

Name and Date

You want people to know that you did the scientific and information research, especially so that you get credit for your original work.

Three Articles

These articles do not and should not be too long. Three to 12 sentences is probably enough. Make sure that each article has its own separate title apart from the main newsletter title, and make sure each covers a separate Garbage Patch related topic. Here are some examples. As you read these examples, remember that you do not already have to be an expert on these topics. It is better if you are not because you will find information to teach you about them.

• What is the Great Pacific garbage patch?
• How was the GPGP discovered?
• How does plastic from (insert US state) get to the middle of the Pacific Ocean?
• Why would fish confuse plastics for food?
• Why is the GPGP mostly plastic?
• How does rain move plastics to the ocean?
• How long does it take plastics in the ocean to degrade?
• What kind of photodegradation can occur in plastics?
• Why are there ocean gyres?
• Why don’t plastics just sink out there?
• What kinds of chemicals attach to plastics in the GPGP?
• How do plastics move up the food chain?
• Can plastics in fish hurt people?
• Can plastics in the GPGP be recycled?
• How would you clean up the GPGP? (This is the environmental engineering connection!)
• How fast is the GPGP growing?
• What are bioplastics and how would they help the GPGP?

Pictures

Include no more than two pictures in the newsletter. Where possible, include a small caption below the image explaining what it is and why it is relevant to the GPGP. Be sure to note the source of your image so that it can be included in the citations section.

Sources and Citations

At least four distinct citations are needed for the newsletter. It is best to put markings/source notes in the text to match information with source, but it is not required. Each citation needs to have these main elements organized in a consistent fashion: author, dates (of the source [if available] and the date of your access of the source), title (of webpage or article) and URL.

Format

One way to present the newsletter content is in two or three columns on a single page, but it does not have to be this way.

Procedure

Before the Activity

• Make certain that the word processing software and Internet access are available and working on all student computers.
• Create a short handout that gives a rubric of what is required for the students or write it on the board so that students can refer to it often.
• (optional) To help in the plagiarism explanation, prepare some common examples of plagiarism from websites.
• (optional) Bring in books or printouts of other information that students could use so that they do not have to rely solely on Internet lookup information.
• (optional) As an example. write your own small newsletter in the format that you would prefer students to use. Or show students the Example GPGP Newsletter. Click HERE for PDF.

With the Students

1. If the GPGP lesson is not given in the same class period as the beginning of the newsletter activity, then provide a brief oral review of the GPGP. As an alternative, show a short video clip of something about the GPGP to get students’ minds once again on the topic.
2. Explain the reasoning, hypothetical situation and elements of the newsletter to the class. Solicit examples from the students about topics they might want in a newsletter. To draw them in from the hypothetical, it may be helpful to bring in some plastic products from stores that you know that students often go to, or even from their own cafeteria.
3. Have students begin independent work on the newsletters. Be available for questions and walk among the computers to offer comments and suggestions.

Troubleshooting Tips

Some students may find this task to be overwhelming if given all at once. An alternative to giving the assignment all at once is to break it up into small mini-assignments that they complete in sequence. An example breakdown: 1) Write a title and article topic list (with brief explanations of each topic), 2) choose 1-2 images and write captions, 3) choose four or more sources and write down source citation information, 4) write significant facts from sources, and 5) put all pieces together into a newsletter.

If students have little experience with information citation, expect them to find it very tempting to plagiarize, or they may simply not understand well-enough what is meant by plagiarism. To make certain they completely understand, it helps to give students many examples and receive feedback from them before work begins. Also, it helps during writing to monitor progress and check with them specifically on plagiarism. A powerful and simple demonstration to illustrate to students that you can tell that they are plagiarizing is to type in a section of their text into an Internet browser to search for it, to show them how easy it is to find their source.

Additional resources [selected by eGFI Teachers]

The Last Straw. ASEE Prism magazine’s November 2018 cover story by Jennifer Pocock on engineering a solution to plastic debris in oceans and other ecosystems.

An Educator’s Guide to Marine Debris. Produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the industry-led North American Marine Environment Protection Association, this short handbook includes lessons for students in elementary, middle, and high school along with a glossary, Plastics Pledge, and Marine Debris Survey.

How We Can Keep Plastics Out of Our Oceans. National Geographic video on how human use of plastic products affects Earth’s ecosystems and ways to mitigate the damage. [YouTube 3:10]

Plants to Plastics. Engineering is Elementary, the Museum of Science, Boston’s engineering design curriculum, has developed a free downloadable lesson for middle school after-school programs on replacing plastic with materials made from plants.

Planet Protectors. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency activities for kids.

Plastic Awareness Info. Videos, websites, activities, and a plastics awareness and recycling curriculum compiled by One More Generation, a conservation group founded in 2009 by then-8 year old Carter Ries and his 7-year-old sister, Olivia.

Ocean Plastics Pollution.  The Center for Biological Diversity’s information and petition for EPA to monitor and regulate plastics as a pollutant.

The Ocean’s Circulation Hasn’t Been This Sluggish in 1,000 Years. That’s Bad News. Washington Post article (4/11/18) on two new scientific studies that link climate change to dramatically slowed-down Atlantic currents, resulting in temperate weather in Western Europe and record lobster harvests in Maine even as cod are dwindling fast.

Plastic Pollution Curriculum and Activity Guide. Lessons in this Penn State resource include analyzing plastic ingested by an albatross, identifying types of plastic, and a pollution and waste audit.

ACTIVITY: Rapid Trash Assessment. California Academy of Sciences activity for grades 4 -12 involves surveying outdoor trash and designing ways to reduce marine pollution.

The Surprising Solution to Ocean Plastic. In this February 2018 TED Talk, David Katz explains The Plastic Bank: a worldwide chain of stores where everything from school tuition to cooking fuel and more is available for purchase in exchange for plastic garbage – which is then sorted, shredded, and sold to brands who reuse “social plastic” in their products. [YouTube 11:53]

Talking Trash and Taking Action: An Instructor’s Guide. Ocean Conservancy and NOAA’s Marine Debris office developed activities and information to help individuals and groups of students learn and do something about ocean pollution.

Ten Ways to Reduce Plastic Pollution. The Natural Resources Defense Council’s top 10 simple ways to cut back on plastic – such as carrying a washable, reusable water bottle instead of buying bottled water.

What is the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? NOAA video explains that it’s not a vast, visible pile of plastic.

National Science Foundation researcher Julia Parrish explains the Great Pacific Garbage Patch – and clean-up prospects:

Filed under: Class Activities, Grades 6-8, Lesson Plans | Comments Off on Ahoy! Plastic in the Ocean

Photo: ASEE volunteer and teacher Becky Smith welcomes participants to ASEE’s Engineering Day sessions at NSTA conference in New Orleans on December 1, 2017

Couldn’t make it to ASEE’s hands-on Engineering Day sessions at the National Science Teachers Association regional conferences or the annual STEM Forum in 2017?

Here are some highlights from the hands-on activities – plus a roster of ASEE and other resources to help you teach engineering in engaging, authentic ways.  Our engineering educators and volunteers will be presenting at the NSTA STEM Forum in Philadelphia July 11-13, 2018. See you there!

STEM Forum & Expo (Orlando, July 2017)

Bringing Polar Research to Your Classroom 

ASEE Volunteers: Philipp Boersch-Supan, University of Florida, and Liesl Hotaling, Eidos Education

Polar-ICE (Polar Interdisciplinary Coordinated Education) is a National Science Foundation-funded program designed to connect scientists, educators, and students using data and research from the Arctic and Antarctic regions.

• Click HERE for the session’s presentation [PDF], including polar research activities on piloting gliders and studying penguins, and links to the polar bear contest for students and other research.
• This two-page handout [PDF] from the session includes links to other classroom activities, including penguins foraging and a link to films about the people, creatures, and geology of the polar region.

Hotaling’s SENSE IT program, a research-proven curriculum in which high school students construct and deploy sensors to monitor the health of their local rivers and other environments, includes four four-class-period modules on using sensors in the environemnt, and curriculum resource guide.

NSTA Regional Conference, Baltimore (October 7, 2017)

Design a Preakness Hat [grade level: K-12] [15 minutes] 

ASEE Volunteer: Pamela Lottero-Perdue, Towson University

Many pipe cleaner design challenges involve building the tallest tower. Dr. Pamela Lottero-Perdue, former chair of ASEE’s Pre-College Division and an education professor at Towson University in Maryland, made the activity more inclusive and appealing by challenging teachers to design a tall hat for Maryland’s famous Preakness Race that not only can stay on one’s head for at least 10 seconds but also contains a correctly colored state flag.

Download Activity [PDF]

Problem: You have come to the Preakness with no hat to wear! (Gasp!) The Preakness is a famous horse race at the Pimlico race track in Baltimore, Maryland. People like to wear fancy hats to the race.

Goal: To engineer a hat that displays Maryland pride.

Constraints: Good news! Your team is prepared for this kind of situation. You gather the following items from your cars and teaching bags:

• 16 fuzzy sticks
• Some clear tape (just 5 cm of tape left – drat!)
• Crayons and scissors
• A State Flags coloring book; it has a ready-to-color image of the Maryland flag. See PDF for template.

You’ve got 12 minutes to create your first attempt at a Maryland Pride Preakness hat. Criteria: Your hat should: 1. Support itself for least 10 seconds on a team member’s head without falling off.

Cannot Support Itself = 0 points Can Support Itself = 3 points 2. Include a correctly colored Maryland flag. Incorrectly Colored = 0 points; Correctly Colored = 3 points. Hold the flag as high as possible; higher is better; measurement is from top of head to bottom of flag. 0 – 10 cm = 0 points; 11 – 20 cm = 1 point; 21 – 30 cm = 2 points; 31 – 40 cm = 3 points, and so on …

Also in Baltimore:

Kindergartners Trying and Trying Again to Engineer Solutions to Problems [K-1]

ASEE Volunteers: Pamela Lottero-Perdue (Towson University: Towson, MD), and Michelle Bowditch, Tedra Webb, and Michelle Kagan (Hall’s Cross Roads Elementary School: Aberdeen, MD)

• Hexbug Maze design challenge overview. [PDF]
• Maze_Parts_Page.pdf
• Sliding_Discs_-_Short_Slide_Sheet_v1.pdf
• Sliding_Discs_-_Long_Slide_Sheet_v1.pdf
• Sliding_Discs_-_Angle_Slide_Sheet_v1.pdf
• Ramp_Part_of_Activity.pdf
• Sliding_Discs_Part_of_Activity.pdf
• Hexbug_Maze_Challenge_Design_Brief.pdf
• Teacher_Tips_from_Presentation.pdf
• Oscar and the Cricket
• Science and Children article describing activities related to Hexbugs and blocks (free to NSTA members, and $.99 for nonmembers)

Simple Electric Circuits [Grades 6-8]

ASEE Volunteers:  LaDawn Partlow and Jumoke Ladeji-Osias (Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD)

Simple circuits presentation [PDF]

NSTA Regional Conference, Milwaukee (November 10)

Engineering Education: Simple Electronics and Microcontrollers for the Classroom [Grades 1-12]

ASEE volunteers: Andrea Burrows and Mike Borowczak (University of Wyoming, Laramie, WY)

Basic electronics hands-on activity that involves building a circuit with LEDs, light sensor, and a microcontroller (e.g. Arduino and Raspberry Pi)

Click HERE for presentation [ppt] on activity and connection to the Next Generation Science Standards. Click HERE for lesson plan, activity, and assessments [PDF] – courtesy of Australian Broadcasting Co. Science.

Can you make the light bulb glow?

Objective: In this activity, you will try to make an electric current flow through a circuit. You will know the instant you are successful because the light bulb will glow! When you have mastered your simple circuit, experiment with other ways to make the circuit, or devise a simple switch.

Inside a light bulb For such a successful invention, light bulbs are pretty simple things. Take a closer look inside your light bulb (use a magnifying glass if you have one). Inside is a filament that looks like a tiny spring. The filament is made from a type of metal called tungsten. It is attached to two tiny metal posts. One of these posts is connected to the outer metal case. The other post is connected to the metal part of the bulb’s base. When electricity flows through it, the tiny filament heats up to more than 2000 degrees Celsius! At these temperatures, tungsten usually reacts with the oxygen and burns out very quickly. To protect the filament from oxygen in the air, light bulbs are filled with a special gas called argon. Argon doesn’t react with tungsten so the bulb can glow for hundreds of hours. Safety note: You are using very safe low voltage light bulbs and batteries which are safe to touch. Never touch household light bulbs – they can become very hot!

Procedure

1. How does a flashlight work? Before you begin experimenting, try drawing the inner workings of how you think a flashlight works in your science journal. Include the battery (or batteries), light bulb, and switch.

2. Make aluminium foil wires. To make a simple, strong wire for your experiments, take a rectangular piece of aluminium foil about 30 × 15 cm and fold it in half. Keep folding the foil this way until you have a long flat ‘wire’ about 1.5cm wide.

3. Making current flow. Using your aluminium wires, battery, light bulb and any other items you have at your disposal, try to make a complete circuit. When you are successful, electric current will flow through the wires and the light bulb so that it glows bright.

4. Make improvements. When you have mastered making a current flow, experiment with ways to make your circuit more sturdy. Use whatever items or materials you have at your disposal to improve your design. You might even design an on/off switch. If something doesn’t work after a few attempts, just stop and look for another way to make your idea work. What have you discovered? When you have finished experimenting, use what you have learnt to draw another picture of how you think a torch works. Does your new drawing match the one you made earlier? Can you describe what you have learnt about how electric currents flow?

Also at ASEE Engineering Day in Milwaukee:

NGSS, 3-D Learning, and the Design and Use of Classroom Assessment [Grades 6-12]

How to conceptualize and design classroom assessments that meet the NGSS.

ASEE volunteers: Brian Gane and Sania Zaidi (University of Illinois, Chicago)

• Click HERE for workshop presentation [PDF] and “Birds, Bees, and Cherry Trees” activity
• Click HERE for workshop activity critiquing two assessments of student learning
• Click HERE for Fairness and Mindfulness Criteria for Designing & Evaluating Assessment Tasks for Formative Use
• Click HERE for task rubric for “Birds, Bees, and Cherry Trees.”
• Click HERE for task rubric for “Locusts Migrate toward Cotton Farms.”

From Concord Consortium’s Next Generation Science Assessment (NGSA) and sample NGSA Tasks project

ASEE @ NSTA in New Orleans (December 1)  

Using Engineering and Coding to Make Science Stick [grades 5-9]

Filed under: K-12 Outreach Programs, Special Features, Web Resources | Comments Off on ASEE Engineering Day Highlights

Science Fair, a documentary about the brilliant teens competing in the Science Talent Search, was a hit at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.

One developed a mathematical model that predicts the spread of “late blight” fungus, which caused the Irish Potato Famine and still damages billions of dollars’ worth of crops annually. Another examined the response of lung cells to fluids used in electronic cigarettes and vaping.

Such research would be impressive coming from a university lab. But these brilliant investigators are high school students whose projects just won first and second place in America’s oldest and most prestigious science and math competition. Past participants have gone on to win national science awards and even the Nobel Prize.

Run by the Society for Science & the Public, publisher of Science News, the 2018 Regeneron Science Talent Search whittled 40 finalists from a 300 STS Scholars selected from 1,800 entrants. The finalists, 15 of whom were young women, came from 31 schools in 15 states and represented a broad diversity of scientific disciplines.

The finalists, who were honored at a gala in Washington, D.C., on March 13, took home $1.8 million in awards. First-place winner Benjy Firester, (photo, above), 18, from Hunter College High School in New York City, took home $250,000 for his development of a mathematical model which predicts how disease data and weather patterns could spread spores of “late blight” fungus that destroys potatoes and other crops. Second place honors and $175,000 went to Natalia Orlovsky, 18, of Garnet Valley High School in Glens Falls, Pa., for her examination of the response of lung epithelial cells to fluids used in vaping, a practice promoted as a safer alternative to smoking cigarettes. Third place winner Isani Singh, 18, of Cherry Hills High School in Aurora, Colo., took home $150,000 for her work toward determining that women with Turner Syndrome (TS), a genetic abnormality in which the second sex chromosome is missing, do have some cells with two X chromosomes.

Other finalists engineered a microwave that spares salads when heating a dinner plate full of different foods (4th place winner Muhammad Rahman from Portland, Oregon) and created a bionic knee brace that improves the wearer’s gait while reducing back pain (9th place winner Syamantek Payra from Clear Brook High School in Friendswood, Texas).

Don’t rush to applaud the U.S. education system that nurtured such talents, however. “Unfortunately, these young people are the exception that proves the rule,” notes Claus von Zastrow in an Education Commission of the States blog post entitled Making Elementary School an Engine of Scientific Achievement. He notes that seven of the nine top STS students in 2016 were children of STEM professionals, and most credited their parents for inspiring them to pursue STEM when they were very young – an advantage that few American children enjoy.

“States can help level the playing field by adopting policies to encourage more science in the elementary grades,” von Zastrow suggests. That may prove a heavy lift, given the current lack of time devoted to science instruction in the typical fourth grade classroom.

Filed under: K-12 Education News, K-12 Outreach Programs, Special Features | Comments Off on America’s Got STEM Talent!