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As a group of young innovative thinkers in Lake Linden works to solve a long standing environmental issue, it has employed the assistance of a 7th grade computer class, leaving 5th graders with a new experience and an eco friendly desk top tool. The Whiz Kids, who are exploring practical uses of stamp sands, are visiting are 5th grade classes and showing students how to make paper weights with the material.
‘When we were in 7th grade we wanted to have a after school science team that we could participate in so we came up with the Whiz Kids Team.’ Said, Gabe Poirier.
With more stamp sand than anybody really knows what do with, Gabe and his teammates have used their love of science to learn and experiment with real world scenarios.
‘For our project this year we used stamp sand which is a harmful left over mining material. And we put it in the concrete to encapsulate all the harmful heavy metals that are inside of it.’
The team has hired the help of Washington Middle School’s 7th grade computer class, that has designed the functional handle for the final product using 3D printed designing software.
‘We have a plastic topper for our paper weights that we made in our computer class. We use a 3D printing software on our computers called Tinker Cad. We used that to make the design and we made it so it said Kings 2018 and Lakes 2018.’ Stated, 7th grader Travis Eck, who’s a computer student in teacher, Matt Lao’s class.
‘We have about 18 kids in our prime time class. They all each designed their own, then they had to trouble shoot it because when you’re going to 3d printed, there’s no support for it, or it’s too hard to print the layers the way they want to, so they just went through the engineering process and they found stuff that didn’t work and they fixed it and they readjusted.’ Said, Laho.
Now that the 7th graders have come up with a working design, the fifth graders were brought in to make there stamp sand paperweights.
5th grader, Paige Lahti said, ‘We had to make a concrete base that had stamp sand in it. And, then mix that with water and then we had to add it to milk cartons and we need to add our toppers.’
Many of the students got their hands dirty and learned some new things.
‘I didn’t know how to make concrete.’ Said. 5th grade student, Keira Johnson.
The Whiz Kids visited CLK last week and will be taking the activity to 5th grade classes in Lake Linden today and tomorrow.
