Helping injured penguin, building underwater robot among Mystic Middle School STEM offerings
Stonington — In February, 10 Mystic Middle School students spent the day at Mystic Aquarium getting to know an African penguin with a torn tendon who needed their help.
After the visit, the students returned to their school and used a 3-D scanner/printer to design and fabricate a protective walking boot for the penguin, who is known as Yellow/Purple. The penguins are named after the identifying beads on their flippers.
Over the past few weeks, another group of students from the school could be found in the pools at the Mystic and Westerly branches of the Ocean Community YMCA as they tested an underwater robot they had built and that they used to qualify for the national SeaPerch competition at Louisiana State University on May 20 and 21.
Other students can be found participating in a new garden club, a robotics club and a Science Olympiad as the school expands its extracurricular efforts in the area of science, technology, engineering and math, more commonly known by the education buzzword STEM.
Schools across the state are trying to increase their efforts in the STEM fields to prepare their students to compete for jobs in an increasingly competitive global marketplace.
“There’s a lot of fun stuff happening here,” said library media specialist Sue Prince, who is overseeing the group of students creating the penguin boot.
“How cool is it to make a machine that does a job,” said teacher Michael McLaughlin, who is leading the school’s SeaPerch team, as students guided the robot through an obstacle course in the Westerly pool. “How often do you get to do that?”
Principal Greg Keith praised his teachers for taking the initiative to create STEM-related clubs and extracurricular activities, calling them “dedicated professionals who take pride in their work.”
“This really adds to the strength of our school. The STEM program enhances everything else we do," he said.
McLaughlin added that “all these STEM projects are things that teachers here heard about and said, ‘Great, let’s do this.’ ”
Prince obtained a grant from the Stonington Education Fund, which supports innovative programs not funded through the school budget, to buy the 3D scanner/printer.
The students will use a cast of the penguin’s foot to design the boot. The students are also investigating what materials work best in salt water and will not irritate the penguin’s foot.
Dale Wolbrink, the aquarium’s director of public relations, explained that Yellow/Purple suffered a torn tendon several years ago. Since then the aquarium’s veterinary staff has been crafting boots to allow the penguin to walk more normally.
Periodically, it needs a new boot, and Dr. Jen Flower, the aquarium’s chief clinical veterinarian, expressed interest in using 3-D printing technology to make fabricating further boots more efficient.
The aquarium then partnered with the school to do just that.
"... To essentially ‘print’ a replacement boot whenever we needed one,” Wolbrink wrote in an e-mail, would take less time and labor.
“This project is a wonderful way Mystic Aquarium can provide students in the local community with the opportunity to understand a real world application of the technology," he said.
Prince said the project helps students discover the real-life applications of 3D printing, math, engineering and design skills while helping the community.
Student Sadie Pozarycki said the project requires students working on different aspects of the boot to focus on a common goal with a real-world cause.
“It encourages a lot of teamwork. It’s everyone working together,” she said, adding that for those with a passion for the STEM subjects, the project demonstrates their effect on the real world.
“It's not just about test scores,” she said.
The students are scheduled to present their project, called “Happy Foot: A 3D Printed Orthopedic Boot for a Penguin in Need,” at the annual Connecticut Educators Computer Association Tech Expo at the Legislative Office Building in Hartford on April 27.
As part of the SeaPerch program, 14 students have built an underwater robot from a kit and deployed it on missions such as navigating an obstacle course and retrieving balls. Student Baxter Menzies said math and science are not usually topics that interest him.
“I did this because my dad wanted me to do something outside of sports,” he said. "This has been fun because I get to rebuild a motor, build a robot to perform tasks and then you get to control it.”
The SeaPerch program, which encourages STEM activities, is named after the USS Perch, a submarine built at Electric Boat in 1936. It was scuttled by her crew in the Java Sea six years later after being damaged by Japanese depth charges. Its crew was captured and spent the rest of the war in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. All but five of the 59 men aboard returned home after the war. It’s wreckage was discovered in November 2006.
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