Category Archives: Students

Items for students and others, interested in learning about science and engineering and the application of science in our lives. We post many of the general interest items here.

Science and Engineering Apprenticeships

Office of Naval Research Science & Engineering Apprentice Program (SEAP)

SEAP provides competitive research internships to approximately 250 high school students each year. Participating students spend eight weeks during the summer doing research at Department of Navy laboratories.

Requirements:

High school students who have completed at least Grade 9. A graduating senior is eligible to apply.
Must be 16 years of age for most laboratories
Applicants must be US citizens and participation by Permanent Resident Aliens is limited.
The application deadline is February 17, 2006.

Apply online for the apprenticeship/internship. See more internship oportunities at externs.com.

Innovative Science Education

Great Scientific Debates

Teach History and the Nature of Scientific Inquiry, History and Philosophy of Science: Overview of Engaging Students in Science Debates.

To take students deep into the process of the development of a scientific idea, we needed to engage the students not only in the real world data and documented history, but also in the process of constructing arguments. Students worked in collaborative groups of 4 in order to write, film, edit, and present their historical scientific debate. In order to prepare them for weighing abstract concepts using available evidence, students learned much of their content through hands-on labs, as well as internet research, related to their selected scientists.

This is a great example of innovating in education. The students in the example were in5th grade at Turtleback Elementary in San Diego.

The Apple site has a great deal of information on the entire process.

Buckminster Fuller

Everything I Know, the historic 42-hour session with Buckminster Fuller via Spontaneous Arising:

During the last two weeks of January 1975 Buckminster Fuller gave an extraordinary series of lectures concerning his entire life’s work. These thinking out loud lectures span 42 hours and examine in depth all of Fuller’s major inventions and discoveries from the 1927 Dymaxion house, car and bathroom, through the Wichita House, geodesic domes, and tensegrity structures, as well as the contents of Synergetics.
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Permeating the entire series is his unique comprehensive design approach to solving the problems of the world. Some of the topics Fuller covered in this wide ranging discourse include: architecture, design, philosophy, education, mathematics, geometry, cartography, economics, history, structure, industry, housing and engineering.

Includes some video and audio or transcribed sessions.

High School Science Outside the Classroom

Science and engineering outside the classroom in two Arlington, Virginia high schools: Yorktown High School and Washington and Lee High School.

At Yorktown, Pumpkins Are a Physics Lesson by Ryan Self:

The students’ machine featured a bike wheel, balanced vertically and supporting a large pole. At the end of the pole, a basket with a special latch was affixed to hold, and eventually fling, the pumpkin.

“We literally didn’t finish until the night before,” Conlan said. “There were some kinks, but we kept overcoming them.”

“People were showing up with huge air-compression machines that were the size of trucks,” Lanberton added. “There were plenty of veterans to the competition there.”

The three students’ longest shot of just under 50 feet hardly kept pace with the eventual champion’s 700-foot toss, but Yorktown physics teacher Dan Carroll, who introduced the students to the idea, said he was as proud of them as if they had won.

“I’ve been going to Punkin Chunkin for four years, and I always wanted to see some students get involved,” Carroll said. “Every year I see more and more kids show up.”

“It’s an opportunity to apply the concepts of physics, in a hands-on way,” Carroll added. “The students did it all independently, outside of school. My involvement was very limited.”

Washington-Lee Teacher Finds Creative Way to Get to Work by Ryan Self:

Avondet, an automotive technology and International Baccalaureate technology teacher at Washington-Lee High School, has attached a large gas-powered motor to his 12-speed bicycle, giving him the option to fire up his bike when weary legs fail him.
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“There have been some kinks, but nothing too major,” he said. “The engine won’t work as well in the rain, and I’ve got the front light hooked up to the generator, which keeps burning out bulbs when I go too fast.”

Avondet’s students say that while the bike is one of a kind, they aren’t too surprised to see their teacher riding it.
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In just two years at Washington-Lee, Avondet has already had one student build a similar model as a class project.

2004 Medal of Science Winners

Presidential Medal of Science - USA

President Announces 2004 Medal of Science Winners

Winners included:

Biological Sciences, Regarded as the “Father of the Green Revolution,” Norman Borlaug, won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his efforts to feed the world’s hungry through improved farming techniques
Engineering, Edwin N. Lightfoot is Hilldale Professor (emeritus) at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He was one of the first biochemical engineering professors in the United States and a forerunner in biomedical engineering. He is awarded the Medal of Science for vigorous and sustained leadership in developing the fields of biochemical and biomedical engineering, particularly in the areas of blood oxygenation, oxygen diffusion into tissue, mathematical modeling of biological pathways, bioseparations and studies of diabetic responses
Chemistry, Stephen J. Lippard is the Arthur Amos Noyes Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. An expert in the interactions between metal ions and biological molecules, Lippard is considered the leader in inorganic chemistry in living systems. He revealed the mechanism by which the anti-cancer drug cisplatnin binds to DNA and inhibits growth in cancer cells and is currently applying that knowledge along with other chemical and gene-therapy strategies to develop better platinum-based molecules and protocols for cancer chemotherapy.
Behavioral or Social Sciences, Kenneth J. Arrow professor of economics (emeritus) at Stanford University. He made groundbreaking contributions to the pure theory of economics

Converting Emissions to Biofuels

Converting emissions to biofuels at GreenFuel Technologies:

In the unit, non-toxic photosynthetic algae ‘eat’ the carbon dioxide and break the nitrogen-oxygen bonds. Scrubbed gas vents from the chimneys at the unit apex. Inline sensors monitor system performance and provide remote reporting, and a built-in automated harvesting system gathers algae ‘crops’ on a preprogrammed schedule, typically daily. The bioreactors are even self-cleaning.

The technology was tested at the MIT Cogeneration Plant (delivered 86% NOx reduction under all conditions, along with 50% CO2 reduction on rainy days, and 82% CO2 reduction on sunny day) and is now being tested at a commerical power plant.

Read news reports about the technology: Power Plants and How Algae Clean the Air

Read a more detailed report from the company: Air-Lift Bioreactors for Algal Growth on Flue Gas: Mathematical Modeling and Pilot-Plant Studies

Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology

Photo of the South’s Boosting Engineering, Science and Technology (BEST) Middle and High School Regional Robotics Championship. The event was hosted by the Ginn College of Engineering at Auburn University.

Teams of middle and high school students from across the eastern U.S. headed to Auburn University this month to showcase their prize winning robots and engage in spirited head-to-head competition centered on the theme “Mission to Hubble.” They also had a chance to visit with NASA astronaut Story Musgrave
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The competition began in September when sponsor-provided kits of standardized parts were distributed, the game challenge was revealed and teams began to design and build their remote-controlled robots. A portion of these teams also chose to compete for the BEST award, which challenges students to market and display their creations.

In October the teams competed at 26 BEST hub sites in 10 states. One month later, the winners of these hub competitions packed up their robots, displays, pep bands, cheerleaders and mascots and headed to Auburn.

We posted a few days ago about less than exciting outreach efforts. This seems like a much more captivating idea to interest students in engineering.

This year’s BEST award went to Wheeler High School, in Marietta, Georgia. Davison High School from Davison, Michigan placed first in the robotics competition.

Two more regional events are scheduled in the next few weeks. Learn more including how your school can participate next year see.

BEST is a non-profit, volunteer-based organization whose mission is to inspire students to pursue careers in engineering, science, and technology through participation in a sports-like, science and engineering-based robotics competition.

Colored Bubbles

The 11-Year Quest to Create Disappearing Colored Bubbles by Mike Haney, Popular Science.

Colored soap bubbles! Of course! Everyone loves blowing bubbles. It seemed such a simple and perfect idea, the kind that would leave other inventors slapping their foreheads and saying Why didn’t I think of that? Kehoe says, “I remember walking down to the store thinking, ‘This is so easy. I’m going to be rich!’ “

Well, rich maybe, but not so easy.

The long years of desk jobs and desperate late-night experiments were finally over. He had done what the toy companies had told him to, and now it didn’t matter what they thought. He had his own well-financed company and a washable bubble. It was time to tell the world.

Photo gallery and movie of the colored bubbles.

Red Blood Cell’s Amazing Flexibility

Scientists Discover Secret Behind Human Red Blood Cell’s Amazing Flexibility:

The human red blood cell membrane skeleton is a network of roughly 33,000 protein hexagons that looks like a microscopic geodesic dome.
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a team of UCSD researchers describe a mathematical model that explains how a mesh-like protein skeleton gives a healthy human red blood cell both its rubbery ability to stretch without breaking, and a potential mechanism to facilitate diffusion of oxygen across its membrane. “Red cells are one of the few kinds of cells in the body with no nucleus and only a thin layer of protein skeleton under their membrane: they are living bags of hemoglobin,” said Amy Sung, a professor of bioengineering at UCSD’s Jacobs School of Engineering

Nanotechnology Education

photo of quantum dots
Bin Yang grows quantum dots (the arrows point to them) as part of his nanotechnology research.

Exploring the Nanoworld from the University of Wisconsin – Madison.

The web site aims to “brings the “wow” and potential of nanotechnology and advanced materials to the public.” I think they still have quite a bit of work to do to reach that goal. It is good to see some effort made to do this but I hope we can do much better.

And this is the best sites I looked at today. All the sites were funded by the NSF as education and outreach efforts. They really need to do a much better job with this outreach. I believe we need to spend money to improve education and outreach but we need to do so in a way that is much more engaging.

We need material teachers can use to engage students.

Video podcast on UW Engineering nanotechnology lab