Student Inventors Tackle Global Problem
[Pictured above: Members of the FCPS Inven team gather round a prototype of their project to adapt rocket stove technology to produce 300 gallons of fresh drinking water per day with a Lemelson-MIT grant of $9,100. They are, reading from left to right: Ly Nguyen, Olivia Dart, Jackson Larimore, Layke Martin, Charlie Giglio, and Andrew Daddone]
A group of 19 Frederick County Public School students have been working as a Career and Technology Center (CTC) Inven Team to provide a solution to a real world problem in a rural African community. Combining their Computer Aided Design (CAD) skills with their own vision, enthusiasm and willingness to think differently, they have now developed a prototype to provide clean drinking water to the children of Melka Olba School in an isolated region three hours from Addis Abeba, the capital of Ethiopia.
Their invention has won them a Lemelson-MIT grant as one of only 15 high schools nationwide to receive such recognition, and an invitation to showcase their solution at EurekaFest, an event for young inventors at MIT next June. The Inven team has been guided towards its achievement by Phil Arnold, CAD engineering teacher at the CTC.
“These students have reached beyond the curriculum to solve a real world problem with a solution that did not previously exist,” Arnold says.
The journey towards achievement began three years ago when a student, Nathan Eschbach researched this challenge. He connected with Jo Elizabeth Butler who had recently moved to Frederick and was a member of the Frederick Rotary Club. Ms. Butler had spent her career working at the UN, and had lived for 16 years in Ethiopia where she founded the Ethiopian Children’s Appeal Charity to improve living conditions for local people.
Having built the school, Ms. Butler moved on to the problem of available drinking water. At the time, women and children were carrying contaminated water from a river source some miles away. When a well was dug to alleviate the water shortage it, too, was polluted with hot spring contaminants. The water was at excessively high temperatures and contained such dangerous chemicals as bad-smelling hydrogen sulphide and hydrofluoric acid which, in an aqueous solution, can cause severe chemical burns and nerve damage.
Andrew Daddone, Invent team project manager and a senior at Thomas Jefferson HS says common practice is for engineers to abandon such wells as unusable. But when Ms. Butler contacted the CTC to ask if the Inven team would tackle the problem, they agreed. And when they received a water analysis from the contaminated well, they determined the only solution would be through distillation which required a furnace, boiler and condensation.
Layke Martin, the director of design and a senior at TJ High School and Jackson Larimore, first year coordinator and a junior at Walkersville HS both referenced the need to change their thinking from a Western-style approach to seeking an African solution.
Using CAD software and a 3-D printer, they eventually abandoned the system models they designed in favor of a solution that was simpler, cheaper and easier to maintain, in other words an adaptation to the resources of a rural African community. Their prototype, constructed of plate steel has been developed from rocket stove technology. The advantages are: an economical use of wood fuel, a burn at very high temperatures, and a 15 gallon capacity boiler that preliminary calculations indicate can produce up to 300 gallons of drinkable water per day.
The Inven team completed the initial application for a Lemelson-MIT grant last March. Ly Nguyen, the testing lead and a senior at TJ High School describes herself as having been the writer for this application. Olivia Dart, the financial manager and a junior at Catoctin HS prepared the budget. The team submitted a request for $9,100 as part of their application, which was granted. The Lemelson-MIT Program was founded in 1994 to inspire young people to pursue a career in seeking inventive solutions.
It is funded by the Lemelson Foundation and administered by MIT’s School of Engineering. The next step for the FCPS Inven team is a mid-grant technical review where representatives from MIT will visit the CTC early next year to get an overview of the project and monitor progress towards completion. The Inven team plans to participate in the June, 2018 EurekaFest in Cambridge, MA and has begun fundraising to meet their travel expenses.
When asked how this project has stretched their thinking, individual Inven team members responded differently. Two members felt the experience had launched them onto an engineering career track. Others were not so sure, but saw the opportunity to learn different skills had broadened their career options. Charlie Giglio, a sophomore at Urbana HS commented that working with team members two grades ahead of him had given him valuable experience.
But the Lemelson-MIT grant has, without a doubt, brought recognition to a diverse and hard-working team that now knows collectively it can go far. What is also apparent is that this team did not shy away from a difficult assignment. In a review of the other 14 winners, only one other school, Tesla Engineering Charter School in Appleton, WI chose to solve a global problem that added cultural differences to the solutions mix.
“Mr. Arnold and these students exemplify the best of FCPS,” adds Superintendent Terry Alban.
