Sean C. Mortgan
Of The New Era
Math, science and engineering are fun.
That’s what Sweet Home High School math teacher Ann Knight was trying to show her students when she took them to Oregon State University to test their engineering skills against the mighty tsunami.
And some of those students won.
On Oct. 28, Knight took her pre-calculus class on a field trip to OSU’s Engineering Department. Joining her were chemistry and physics teacher Cheryl Munts and one of her classes.
With Knight’s pre-calc students on the trip, it didn’t leave many students in one of Munts’ classes, so Munts joined the group.
Students often ask Knight what is the point in taking algebra, pre-calculus and other high school math. They want to know how they’ll use it in the real world.
The point, Knight said, is that the math has plenty of real-world applications, many of which are fun and satisfying. But getting there takes a lot of building, just like writing.
Children learn letters, she said, and then they form words, which are used to create sentences and then paragraphs and then stories.
In the same way, what math students learn in grade school, junior high and high school paves the way for college and a career, she said. She wanted to show that to her students.
“You learn the algebra and geometry skills so you get to the cool stuff in college,” she said. Like basketball, it requires getting the fundamentals down and building on them before playing in the big game.
The crew of about 30 students met with a student ambassador from OSU’s engineering school. They toured the various engineering college buildings, starting with a brand new “green” building that catches rainwater for flushing toilets and takes advantage of solar energy to heat and light the structure.
They were in luck that day as they stopped by the auto shop where an extra-curricular mechanical engineering club builds formula and Baja cars, Knight said. The club then pits their cars against those from other colleges.
“They’re not just going to class,” Knight said. “They’re doing something with what they learn.”
The student ambassador is a member of a club that built a concrete canoe, Knight said.
“Why a concrete canoe?” Knight said the ambassador asked. “They’re just trying to get us to think outside the box.”
Knight said the group didn’t have time to see a robot.
“My intent there was for the kids to hear from a student and learn about opportunities at OSU in the college of engineering,” she said.
After lunch on campus, the Sweet Home students headed for the Wave Research Lab to test their work against tsunamis.
“Our students were given packets of small pieces of wood, like tiny 4x4s, two-sided tape and little platforms to build them on,” Knight said. The two-sided tape was used to construct tiny buildings and attach them to the platforms.
The two-sided tape acts like soil when a tsunami hits, she said.
The students listened to a presentation on efforts at seaside to build evacuation structures. Knight said Japan already has developed specialized evacuation structures.
Seaside has large inland flatlands and is more susceptible to the dangers of a tsunami, she said. That’s the focus of tsunami research at the Wave Research Lab.
After the presentation, students put their structures together and attached them to the platforms.
“They are supposed to be evacuation structures,” Knight said. In groups of two and three, they designed their structures. Some built them with a point toward the incoming wave while others built their structures on stilts so water would pass beneath them.
One group built a wall in front of its structure, sort of fortifying the structure inside.
Then lab students threw increasingly larger miniature tsunamis at the structures.
The structures were attached to the floor of a sloped pool-like structure. A moveable wall at the far end was used to push the waves at the small town.
All of the buildings survived the smallest tsunami. The lab followed up by creating a medium tsunami. In that one, only people, represented by ping pong balls, outside the structures were washed away. The next tsunami was about the biggest that could be anticipated in the real world. Many of the structures were washed away by that one.
The remaining structures faced their toughest challenge next: A Hollywood blockbuster-style tsunami. Not a single structure survived that one. Although one built by David Rinehart and Mitchell Grove was washed away, the structure did not collapse.
“Why do we learn this?” Knight asked. “Depending on your major, like journalism, you’re not going to use trigonometry and algebra.”
But students don’t know yet which direction they are headed, she said, and math is an integral part of the path to projects and research like they saw on this field trip.
In 2006, the National Science Foundation predicted a 70 percent increase in the number of science and technology jobs in the next 20 years, Knight said. The trend in recent years has been fewer U.S. graduates and more foreign graduates in science, technology, engineering and math.
That’s why the state of Oregon is saying students need to have three years of Algebra I or higher to graduate, she said, and Sweet Home High School no longer offers eighth-grade math.
There also has been a push to educate educators to pass the word along to students and expose them to the many opportunities in those fields, Knight said. It can be financially rewarding and fun building a bridge and seeing people drive across it.