Making music with Diet Coke cans, a helmet to help prevent concussions, a project on biodigestion and a student-designed Rolex watch for women are just a few of the projects Brown County Junior High School students were showcasing Dec. 6.
The gymnasium at BCJHS was full of students, their families and the school’s corporate partners checking out and showing off all that STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education has to offer.
Students from digital citizenship, engineering, language arts, mass media, math, music technology, science, social studies and visual arts classes all had projects featured in the STEM Showcase.
Principal Brian Garman said that 95 students decided to participate in the showcase. He estimated around 170 parents and community members attended the event.
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]“There are two parts to it: The kids who create and build things using the engineering design process, the engineering problem solving process and then kids that just use technology to create things in any class across any discipline,” he said.
This is the second year for the showcase.
“It was kind of an extension of…our shift to becoming a STEM school. It’s one of the foundations of STEM is giving kids opportunities to display work, showcase work, explain to people the processes they used to create things,” he said.
“We wanted to give community, parents and students a chance to interact with our community partners, the educational people and also the corporate people.”
In April of this year, BCJHS received a STEM (science, technology, math, engineering) certification from the Indiana Department of Education.
Some students gave formal presentations about their project processes during the showcase, too.
Cook Medical, NSWC Crane, Cummins, Mainstream Fiber and Columbus Regional Hospital were some of the corporate partners there to educate students and their families about career opportunities in the STEM field as well as do some demonstrations, too.
Corporate partnerships is one of the reasons BCJHS received its STEM certification.
“Eventually this is going to be the workforce for tomorrow and so what better place to start in the school system than middle school to expose these students to what the possibilities are,” said Vic Makximenko, a chief strategist with Crane.
“It’s absolutely awesome. I had an opportunity to talk with the students and talk with them about some of their projects they’ve been working on. I find it fascinating at their age how confident they are, how articulate they are and how well researched they are in their particular projects. To me I find it exciting for the future of this area.”
Kim Rohlfing and Liz Eaton, both with Cook Medical, also attended the showcase. Cook Medical is another BCJHS corporate partner.
“For students it’s important for them to know what job opportunities are available to them. For employers, for us it’s important to create a pipeline of talent to come to our companies. We always want Indiana students to stay home. A lot of kids go to college and leave our great state,” Rohlfing said.
Eaton was doing product demonstrations with medical devices during the showcase, including a tool used to remove kidney stones. Eaton has been working with Brown County Junior High School for a couple of years now.
Eaton is also a member of the junior high school’s STEM Advisory Board made up of different corporate partners.
Junior high students also get partnered up with industry partners who present groups of students with real life problems to solve.
“Cook is really supportive of community. I’ve been working with them and I just love working with them. The kids are hilarious, there is so much brilliance…I work with a lot of schools and Brown County is really, by far and away, the most invested in this,” Eaton said.
Dave Redding is a research engineer with Cummins. He also serves on the STEM Advisory Board. He is personally sponsoring two projects this school year groups of students are working on this school year.
“I think it’s wonderful that through the supervision and the framework the teachers put up that I’m able to come in and help support them in what we asked them to do. If I can inspire kids, if I can make Cummins a less intimidating place and they consider it in their future plans that’s a bonus,” he said.
Problem solvers
Eighth-graders Henry Himebaugh and Aiden Schilling put together a project on biodigestion in their science class that was featured in the showcase.
“(Biodigestion) is basically the process of creating methane gas by decomposing organic material, like maybe leftover food, manure. Specifically cow manure because it produces methane gas,” Himebaugh said.
The two had a slideshow presentation at the showcase explaining the process that would help control manure so that it doesn’t negatively affect the atmosphere and allow methane gas to be used to create electricity.
“It also helps climate change because even though the most popular greenhouse is CO2, methane is 30 times heat trapping, so it’s much denser. It is a potential problem considering that there are 1.4 billion cows and 19 billion chickens in the world. They are the highest producers of methane gas,” Himebaugh said.
Himebaugh said that STEM education makes him think about how to solve certain problems and that climate change is a major issue in the world.
“We thought if maybe you control methane it fights against climate change. If you leave cow manure out for too long it produces methane and if you leave it out in 90 plus degree temperatures it could catch on fire and potentially harm the animals, damage property,” he said.
Not far from Himebaugh and Schilling sat eighth-graders Blake Grider and Ethan Spiece with sketches of a youth football helmet they designed to help reduce concussions. The two are football players.
“We’ve experienced other players getting concussions. We thought it would be a good idea to help other people prevent concussions,” Grider said.
They added a vicis reflex to the helmet, a substance that absorbs shock and distributes it in and out of the helmet.
“So, most of it is going outside the helmet, but there’s still shock going into the helmet, which is also causing the concussion,” Grider continued.
To remedy that, Grider said they added a sorbothane gel, which was created by Michigan University, and it hardens when impacted so it slows down all of the “energy and distributes it back outside the helmet to prevent all of the energy from going inside your head.”
The gel would go above the inner padding of the helmet, according to their design.
Grider said it’s important to reduce concussions because young people can experience short-term and long-term memory loss from getting them. Concussions can also crack a human skull causing death.
The project was initially made in science class as a Science Fair project.
Next to Grider and Spiece was Abigail Watson who was displaying two STEM projects. The first was a oyster perpetual Rolex she designed to fit women using computer software in engineering class.
“I made it more for like women. I made a petite band,” she said.
“We all had to make a watch, but I decided to go with the oyster perpetual watch because I wanted to make it my own. It’s a generic watch to change. It didn’t have a lot of intricate details so I can make my own.”
She also had two different bridge models on display that she built. One was a suspension bridge similar to the Golden State Bridge and the other was an arc bridge.
“I was just trying to make models to test them to see which one carries more weight. My research shows the arc bridge is actually better for weight because it expands the weight throughout the whole bridge instead of just putting a lot of pressure in the center of the bridge,” she said.
Watson said STEM education helps BCJHS “in so many ways.”
“I don’t think many people realize that. We’ve improved so much as far as technology. All of our classes, we get to combine and do projects. It’s really fun,” she said.
Eighth-grade Dylan Taylor presented his project he created in his music technology class using a Makey-Makey circuit board and Diet Coke cans.
“Basically the Makey-Makey is a circuit board that you can bind any conductor like object to an alligator clip and then clip it to the circuit board to make different sounds on this virtual keyboard we hooked up (to a computer). I will be the conductor,” Taylor said as he touched the Diet Coke cans in front of him.
As he touches the cans different melodies can be heard coming through the laptop set up in front of him.
Seventh-grader Madalyn Purlee had two projects she presented at the showcase. One was on global citizenship and the other was a website she created for History Day last year about the Panama Canal.
She is a member of the Global Citizen Club who meets every day from 7:20 to 8:15 a.m. to talk with Chinese students about goals identified by the United Nations like gender equality and climate action. About 20 BCJHS students are in that club.
Purlee had photos of some of the students the club speaks with on the table next to her.
“Some of the benefits of it is that you get problem solving skills, public speaking skills,” she said.
“If anything they ask us to repeat it because their English isn’t that well or type it in the chat so they could at least use Google to translate to Chinese.”
The students recently discussed pollution in Beijing and some possible ways to solve that issue including needing more ways to cutback from nonrenewable energy sources and biking or walking to work.
“We all said similar things on how we can fix it and make it better,” she said.
