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A group of students from Lake Linden-Hubbell Schools are the first from the area to qualify for the eCybermission regional competition.
The event is sponsored by the Army Educational Outreach Program and involves students selecting a science or engineering project that will benefit the community.
Using a common method of electroplating, the students were able to pull copper from stamp sand.
7th grader Siona Beaudoin explains how they did it, “We let the stamp sand set in acid for a week and then we put the plates in the acid and set up a current and it plated.”
7th grader Will Lyons says separating the copper from the stamp sand would have both environmental and economic benefits, “I hope that it’s able to be used to extract the copper from the stamp sand, and other heavy metals, and hopefully save the lake and bring some profit to the community.”
eCybermission is a nationwide competition that starts with thousands of teams, but only a few dozen are selected to compete in the regional’s.
The students will give their virtual presentation at Michigan Tech on Tuesday, with a chance to move on to the finals in Washington D.C.
With support from the university, MTU’s Senior Lecturer of Engineering Fundamentals Gretchen Hein says these students have been able to do more than just a simple science project. “I teach first year engineering and the report they created is comparable to what my engineering students do, so they did a lot of work,” said Hein. “They learned how to write a technical publication, which is very difficult to do. They learned how to cite their references and their sources, and the learned how to plot data. They learned how to analyze the data, so there’s a lot of scientific and engineering value to what they did.”
The students are also eligible to apply for a $5,000 grant to continue their research.
Also participating are students Beau Hakala and Gabe Poirer.
