Several high school seniors in the Hazelwood School District Project Lead the Way® program gave their first presentations as they reach the end of their classes in the spring term. This program has taken them through four years of high school and is their culmination project.
Presenting in pairs or in trios, the students explained and showed the processes, hurdles and end results of their engineering design and development projects to an audience of peers, high school and college engineering instructors at the Advanced Manufacturing Center on the campus of St. Louis Community College at Florissant Valley.
Each group used a PowerPoint presentation and brought prototypes or parts of their designs. Brittany Smith-Holden and Derek Woods, seniors at Hazelwood East High School, presented first. They created a motion-sensor that opens trash cans.
“Most people don’t want to throw their trash away because they have to touch some part of the can to open the lid,” Smith-Holden said. She cited a statistic that a typical trash container lid has 441 bacteria per square inch. The pair also said a trash receptacle with a motion sensor might appeal to the disabled, who might not be able to lift a lid manually.
All of the groups had the same goal, to come up with a problem that has an engineering solution. Many of their presentations followed the same format – they wrote a problem statement, they surveyed classmates, staff members or visitors to the school on related points and they listed the product’s specifications and a materials list.
At the end of their presentations, each group answered questions and explained what they learned from their projects.
“We chose a trash can because this was the best thing to do time-wise, cost-wise and materials-wise,” Woods said. “I learned about the importance and value of teamwork.”
“Plan your project wisely and have a back-up plan in place,” Smith-Holden advised.
“How exciting to have our first engineering design and development class demonstrate their inventions and products!” said Gail Stewart, the district’s special areas coordinator.
“Project Lead the Way was implemented in the District during the 2003-2004 school year. This was our first group of students to complete this senior capstone course, which allows students to demonstrate what they have learned over the past four years.”
Matthew Woodard of Hazelwood East High School and Samantha Washburn of Hazelwood West High School, along with senior Brittany Nickelberry from Riverview Gardens High, created a heated glove with a space for a personal music player.
“Ordinary insulated gloves don’t do enough to keep your hands warm and the cold makes manipulating personal music players difficult,” read the group’s problem statement.
They surveyed 50 students and found that more than three-fourths of those asked would pay for a glove that makes it easier to use a personal music player and keep their hands warm. More than one-third of those same people said they would pay $20 for such a device.
The trio wanted the glove to: be fashionable, not harm any personal music players, be battery-operated, rechargeable, inexpensive, one-size-fits-all and to have a heating source that could be switched off.
“If the glove wasn’t one-size-fits-all, we could not keep the price the same for everyone,” Washburn said.
The original plan called for two flat lithium-ion batteries but they were unable to locate any. Using alkaline batteries caused various problems with the heating wires in the glove. They settled on using five nickel-cadmium cells.
“We found that, particularly in the girls, their fingertips get chilled but the rest of their hand stays warm,” Nickelberry said.
Time management became a crucial lesson for this group and they said the design proposal changed as they progressed, meaning they had to be flexible when not everything happened according to plan.
Travis Smith from Hazelwood Central High School, Rodney West from Hazelwood East High School and Terrell Davis, a Riverview Gardens High School senior, made their presentation.
They initially wanted to make wireless headphones but time constraints and budget limits forced them to rethink the plan. After brainstorming and looking around the machine shop, they noticed that the automated assembly line (also known as a Computer-Integrated Manufacturing cell or CIM cell) lacked an automated lathe shield. A lathe is a machine tool which spins a block of material to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding or drilling. Here, a lathe is one part of the CIM cell.
The young men tried using dual pneumatic pistons to open and close the shield but they quickly discovered a single piston would do the job and would not need alignment like a dual-piston arrangement would.
Davis passed around two pistons for the educators and fellow students to examine.
They learned to explore every idea, Smith said. He was happy to work on the lathe shield even though he really wanted to create wireless headphones, he said. Another point they learned was to delegate tasks to each member instead of waiting to tackle them as a group or a pair.
“PLTW pre-engineering and biomedical courses are preparing Hazelwood students for college and careers,” said Dr. Mary Piper, associate superintendent.
“It is rewarding to impact students in the programs. It is even more rewarding to know that we, as educators, impact the future through the work these young people will do in the years to come.”
