Steam Expeditions
Our Projects.
Project Reservoir would like to showcase what our 2017- 2018 STEM based teams did this year with an environmental and community education focus. Our teams were busy this year creating websites, social media sites, connecting with their community, making international connections with scientific experts through social media, came up with plans on changing their neighborhoods, the State of NJ, and the world. Our teams did that this by entering national STEM competitions like the Lexus Eco-Challenge, Exploravision, and Ecybermission. We hope to enter our next years teams in the same competitions, but also hope to find more!
PLASTIC ELASTIC 3.0
GRAND PRIZE WINNER OF LEXUS ECO CHALLENGE -MIDDLE SCHOOL DIVISION
Our team wants to find a way to filter out an aquatic system full of plastic microfibers. Plastic microfibers are smaller pieces of plastic that flow through our water system. There are actually plastic microfibers in our clothes and when we wash they go down the drain. The water that goes down the drain carries the fibers into the ocean, harming many animals. Many people eat fish and the fibers go through us humans being toxic to us.
STYRO TERMINATORS
1ST PLACE WINNER OF LEXUS ECO CHALLENGE - MIDDLE SCHOOL DIVISION
What our team does is take chunks of Styrofoam , and experiment with it. We use “superworms” (which are also known as the larvae of a darkling beetle) to reduce the amount of styrofoam in our classroom. We also use littered styrofoam to do this. Over time, the larvae consumes the styrofoam and it turns into waste, which takes up much less space than the styrofoam. We record how long it takes for the superworms to fully digest the styrofoam assigned and we take notes on the larva's behavior throughout this process.
Micro Algae is a world wide issue with the increase in the eutrophication of our water due to nutrient run-off and this team the Algae Extinguishers is working on it. They have discovered organisms that extinguish micro and macro algae in the lab. They are designed a way to place our tag team (Amphipods and Daphnia) in a containment filtration system that protects these organisms from predation and cleans water of algae in a natural way. Created a web based widget to track algae blooms with Google Earth and SeeClickFix, and create the world's first bio-filter for drinking using daphnia as filters, and they created an online guide in Spanish warning of dangers of Cyanobacteria blooms. They were winners in the first round of the Lexus Eco-Challenge as well. Algae Extinguishers at http://projectreservoirateam.weebly.com/.