UNH takes middle schoolers on scientific field trip
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DURHAM—Dover Middle School students recently experienced some hands-on science during a field trip to the University of New Hampshire.
Engineers at UNH’s Environmental Research Group (ERG) worked with DMS science teacher Mathew Johnson to let “Gold Team” students apply some of the concepts they learned in the classroom to the real-life problem of water pollution.
"It’s pretty cool,” said Damian Hile, 13. "It’s different than what we do at school—instead of paperwork, we’re getting outside and studying stuff.”
Over the course of two days (Tuesday Oct. 31 and Wed. Nov. 1), approximately 100 eighth-graders worked in small groups with UNH graduate students. They collected water samples from College Brook and tested them for a variety of pollutants and water quality indicators, including copper, phosphate, pH and dissolved oxygen.
"A little bit of copper can get into drinking water from copper pipes and that’s OK,” UNH Research Engineer Deana Aulisio explained to her group of four students. “But copper is very toxic for fish, even at low levels, so we don’t want that in our water.”
In a state-of-the art water quality testing lab in Gregg Hall, the students donned safety goggles before dipping pH strips in their samples and mixing them with chemicals to reveal the presence of pollutants. The water from College Brook showed little evidence of pollution, but the samples provided by the lab for comparison, such as water that had leached through mining waste, were very polluted.
The students also received a demonstration of the high-tech equipment in the lab, including a machine that uses plasma, a super-heated gas, for measuring minute quantities of pollutants such as lead. Although more accurate, it works much the same as the simple flame test the students learned about back in their classroom.
This is basically a $500,000 flame test. But instead of a flame, we’re using plasma that’s as hot as the sun,” said graduate student Scott Greenwood. “A lot of people depend on equipment like this to make sure their water is safe, but not that many have actually seen one. You guys are getting to see behind the scenes how engineers are keeping you safe.”
When the students get back to their classroom, they will organize the data they recorded and report their findings to Johnson. “The main reason for doing this with a pre-high school class is to get the kids thinking about science and secondary education,” he said. “Middle school is where it starts. It sparks right there.”
Both Johnson and Greenwood, who helped organize the field trip, hope it will become an annual event. “We’re always looking for ways to give them good experiences outside of the classroom,” said Johnson. “It just makes it a better learning environment for the kids.”
Captions:
(top)
DMS eighth-grader Aman Kaur, 13, collects a water sample from College Brook.
UNH Research Scientist Deana Aulisio looks on as Damian Hile, 13, pours a water sample into a beaker prior to testing it for the presence of copper. Watching are Lacquora Horan, 13 and Tony Farrow, 14.
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