Implementing Project-Based Learning by Boss Suzie;

Author:Boss, Suzie;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Solution Tree

Vog Scrubber

By coincidence, a second PBL example that emphasizes entrepreneurship and innovation also comes from Hawaii. In this case, it’s about students responding to an unusual local situation: living in the shadow of an active volcano.

Eric Clause is the STEM coordinator at the Hawai’i Academy of Arts and Science, a public charter school in Pāhoa, Hawaii. Clause came to teaching as a second career and brings private-sector experience in science and engineering. He teaches about 120 students in grades 7–12.

Clause didn’t have to search far to find a STEM problem for his students to tackle. In fact, they identified it themselves. In 2014, lava flows from the nearby Kilauea volcano were approaching their small community. When Clause asked students about possible ill effects from the lava flow, one student responded, “The vog, obviously!” Vog is volcanic fog, a gaseous discharge that smells like rotten eggs and can pose dangers to people with asthma and other respiratory conditions. Air conditioners and air filters aren’t designed to eliminate what’s in vog. With this authentic problem affecting their own families and classmates, students wondered if they could leverage their understanding of STEM to invent an inexpensive device that would clean vog from the air.

Although the project eventually got into marketing and entrepreneurial concepts, that’s not where it started. “My students wanted to do something to help our community. That was their initial inspiration for the project,” Clause recalls. “It’s a student-driven project that grew out of a real need.”

Tackling the project gave Clause a chance to guide students through lessons in both chemistry and engineering. They learned that vog is composed of extremely acidic compounds that bond with moisture in the air. “When it reaches the lungs, it’s sulfuric acid—same as you’d find in a car battery,” the teacher explains. Laboratory experiments gave them opportunities to try to neutralize the acid, learning through experience about balancing chemical equations.

Using ready-made materials they could find in a hardware store—an innovation strategy for rapid engineering—students designed a vog scrubber. It pushes a column of acidic air down to a vat of water that’s been mixed with a base (in this case, a compound similar to baking soda) to neutralize the acid. “What you get is salt that settles to the bottom and clean air.” In effect, students repurposed that old science fair standby—the vinegar and baking soda volcano—but for an authentic purpose.

Their first working model was large, made out of a wet/dry vacuum, a trash can, and PVC pipes that they drilled air holes into. That rudimentary version was big enough to scrub a large volume of air, such as the open spaces in a school building. As they fine-tuned the model, they came up with a household-sized scrubber, effective for cleaning smaller areas. The design process generated mathematics discussions about measuring volume, air flow, and pump rates.

As they prepared to go public with their invention, students had to make marketing decisions about pricing their new product. Local Ace Hardware outlets and a convenience store chain both agreed to sell the product kit at zero markup.

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