Today we tested materials to see how they absorbed or extracted the oil from our pretend oil spill.  The results were very interesting!  In the pictures above, students are practicing working with a pipette before using it during the experiment.  Our results and observations are in the chart above.

In conjunction with our Interdependence Within an Ecosystem unit, we are following the Engineering Design Process (EDP) through a realistic problem.  Our problem is (pretend) there was an oil spill in the Winooski and/or Lamoille Rivers.  How are we (acting as Environmental Engineers) going to clean it up?  Using our iSTEAM time, we have learned about the ecosystems of both rivers and have moved through the Ask and Imagine portions of the EDP.  Today, we learned that a boom is something that engineers use to contain an oil spill.  We tried out yarn and rubber bands as 2 possible booms in a “river” that had an oil spill to see how those materials worked.  Here’s some of our charts and observations: