Young scientists want to clean your gutters – Columbia Daily Herald

By MIKE CHRISTEN mchristen@c-dh.net

Students at Mt. Pleasant High School are simultaneously working to battle the Zika virus and earn credit toward an associate degree.

If you are lucky, they might even do some house work for you, too.

The schools mechatronics and AP environmental science classes are working together in an attempt to reduce the citys mosquito population in an effort find ways to prevent the spread of the Zika virus.

Students in the environmental science class made their first presentation of their new project in front of fellow students and local residents at the Mt. Pleasant Community Center last week.

As the mechatronics students continue the work they began last year designing and building both an aerial and aquatic drone to test samples of stagnant water across middle Tennessee, the environmental science class has been working to collect and record Mt. Pleasants current mosquito population.

After taking samples of stagnant water for the past two weeks, the class will soon begin encouraging members of the community to implement methods to reduce the mosquito population.

The students remind the community the most important thing to keep in mind was to avoid letting water lay stagnant.

One of the most common places for mosquitoes to lay eggs are gutters, so the students, assisted by their peers, will offer a gutter cleaning service on Tuesday, Aug. 22.

We wanted to reach out to the community, Nicholas Wilkes said. This is to help the community and aid our own research.

Students will take samples of the stagnant water and then clean the gutters at no charge.

For more information or to request the service call (931) 379-5583.

We dont just want to experiment on campus, Phoebe Hurt said. Not only will we be getting the samples we need but we will be helping the community.

Students do ask that participants live near walking distance to the school.

The teenage researchers will again take samples in the coming weeks to see if there is a change in the local mosquito population.

The results will be recorded and entered as part of the Lexis Eco Challenge, a national STEM competition for grades 612 that awards a total of $500,000 in grants and scholarships to eligible teachers, students, and schools each year

This year we hope to make use of some of the resources we got last year, mechatronics instructor Armin Begtrup said. We will have some real data we can point to. The kids have the motivation and I am loving the collaboration between the classes.

Students participating in the project will earn college credit hours following the school districts partnership with Columbia State and the Tennessee College of Applied Technology.

Although the project will give students a head-start in college showing the similarities between the scientific method and the fundamentals of design and engineering, Begtrup said the projects most importantly giving students a valuable life skill that that they can use no matter what profession they eventually choose.

Learning the content is one thing, but teaching these students how to work and think collaboratively is really what we are doing, Begtrup said. They are learning how to approach a problem and create a solution. That is how the real world works.

Last year, some participating seniors earned scholarships based on their work on the project.

Kem Pounders, an experienced educator at Mt. Pleasant High School, is instructing the young environmental scientists.

The collaboration builds the strengths between science and engineering, Pounder said. We dont need to be isolated, we need to be working together for every project that we do.

For more information on the project visit http://www.tinyurl.com/zikazappers.

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Young scientists want to clean your gutters - Columbia Daily Herald