Trash to Treasure

1. Peggy A. Dunn1, Kathryn A. Godby2, Mingming Lu3, Ming Chai3 1Newport, KY, Newport High School; 2Florence, KY, R.A. Jones Middle School; 3Cincinnati, OH, University of Cincinnati, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering • Middle School Science • Students will complete surveys with their families to determine their consumption of oil • Students will research alternative fuels and investigate the positive and negative aspects of these fuels. • Students will present information about their alternative fuel source to the class • PowerPoint, poster, video, skit, • Students will act as members of a fuel company and debate other groups of students who have researched different alternative fuels while attempting to determine the best fuel choice for the future • Students will complete an open response question focused on the role of science in societal decisions • KY Standards • SC-6-I-U-3 • Students will understand that science can sometimes be used to inform ethical decisions by identifying the likely consequences of an action, but cannot be used to establish if taking that action would be right or wrong. • SC-6-I-S-4 • Students will differentiate the usefulness of scientific research to predict the possible consequences of decisions about environmental issues from its limitations in making ethical/moral decisions about those issues • Application • High School: Work in a lab using applied inferential statistics to test for significant differences between samples of waste frying oil • Middle School: Research an alternative fuel and use information to debate student groups supporting other fuels • Careers • Middle and High School: Introduces students to a field of research and marketing that can be investigated using math and science. Special emphasis on applications and opportunities in engineering. • Society • Middle and High School: Energy is a topic of high importance. Students look at how they can contribute to a solution and impact our future environment. High School Math –AP Statistics • Students will “work” for a company that produces biodiesel from waste frying oil. • Students will develop and test a hypothesis concerning random samples of oil. • 3 random samples • 4 separate restaurant chains • Students will perform a titration using phenolphthalein to determine the percent of free fatty acid that is in each sample. • Students will perform transesterification • Measure glycerol and biodiesel • Calculate 90%,95%, and 99% confidence intervals to predict amount of biodiesel per liter of WFO • Students will perform hypothesis testing to determine if significant differences exist between samples or between restaurant chains • . • Students will present their findings to the class using PowerPoint. • NCTM Standards • Students will organize and consolidate their mathematical thinking through communication • Students will recognize and apply mathematics in contexts outside of mathematics. • Students will formulate questions that can be addressed with data and collect, organize, and display relevant data to answer them; • select and use appropriate statistical methods to analyze data Trash to Treasure Misconceptions Only a low performance vehicle can run on biodiesel References www.unitedstreaming.com www.greenestsiteever.com/.../07/earth-race3.jpg http://www.maui.net/~toystore/tours.htm www.travelmatters.org Acknowledgements Specials thanks to Dr. Ming Ming Lu, Mr. Ming Chai, Dr. Jon Breiner, Dr. Glenn Markle, Mr. Eugene Rutz, Dr. Anant Kukreti, and Mrs. Andrea Burrows R.A. Jones Middle School Grant ID No EEC0601960