PSE Summer Camp – 3rd Time is a Charm

Every summer, faculty, staff and students collaborate to produce a high impact summer camp experience for rising high school juniors and seniors. As a part of The Engineering Place at NC State, the goal for this experience was to help students look at different academic and career path that they might not have considered otherwise, while gaining insight on what engineering really is and how biomaterials lead to a more sustainable world. Jennifer Piercy and Paula Harrod organized lectures and labs taught by Drs. Byrd, Jameel, Lucian, Pal, Pawlak and Venditti, and assisted by undergraduate PSE students:  Michael Alcivar Mora, Audra Chenoweth, Ethan Schwartz, and Wesley Maier. The labs were invigorated by the students’ energy as well as the staff’s eagerness to pass along their knowledge on biomaterials, but also on the college experience.

A Think and Do Mentality

As a part of the current NC State motto to “Think and Do the Extraordinary” the week long camp was organized by lectures followed by  hand-on-labs. This year students learned about adsorption and absorption, bioplastics, 3D printing, recycling, and biomaterials.

In the adsorption and absorption lab, the campers worked with a lesser known application of paper products in the form of fluff pulp and Super Absorbent Polymers (SAP). Dr. Pawlaks lecture gave students a background on what fluff pulp and SAP are, and how they are used in personal hygiene products. The students then were tasked to find the ratio of SAP and fluff pulp to create the most efficient tea bag “diaper.” The students were assisted by Audra Chenoweth who was there for moral support and to answer questions about the properties of each ingredient.

Dr. Byrd and Michael Alcivar Mora taught the students  how the recycling process of paper works, its benefits, pitfalls, and where improvement can happen. After a brief lecture,  the students made their own recycled sheet of paper from scratch using handsheet molds. It was in this lab that students got noticeably excited about papermaking as they went through the steps of de-inking, formation, pressing, and drying. Some students even went a step further and innovated methods to decrease the yield loss in the de-inking process while maximizing the cleanliness of the sheet.

Dr. Pal’s lecture on nanotechnology and the future of printed circuits resonated with the tech-savvy students. As he walked them through his research laboratory their eyes gleamed with excitement as they saw circuits being printed on flexible sheets of paper as opposed to stiff motherboards. Wesley Maier put these paper circuits to use by attaching them to speakers loaded with movie clips. The students then had to complete the circuits to allow for the clips to play. The challenge was to be the first group to guess all the movie clips correctly.

Drs. Jameel and Lucian took the reigns in the biofuels and bioplastics lecture and lab. The biofuels lab was held first as it required the students to distill ethanol from sugar cane, a process that takes about three days. Ethan Schwartz assisted with this complex lab learning a substantial amount in the process. After the ethanol was distilled, the students used it to power a small fan. While the ethanol distilled, students worked on creating environmentally friendly plastics using glycerin, water, vinegar, cornstarch, and heat.

Lastly, the students completed an online lab that allowed them to analyze the life cycle of different products. Dr. Venditti gave the lecture before this online lab was completed.  The lecture and lab opened the student’s minds about how bio-based products have a shorter life cycle in contrast to plastics and petroleum-based products. Even though there is more paper waste than plastics, the paper will decompose a lot sooner than its plastic counterparts.

After all the labs were done, the students made short presentations to help get them used to giving presentations. They presented to faculty, parents, and fellow counselors. This allowed them to internalize all of the information learned throughout the week while giving their parents a comprehensive view on what they did during their time at NC State.

The Best Engineering Camp at State

This year’s summer camp was a huge success. The counselors connected extremely well with the students and it is evident that they left with a bigger mindset regarding biomaterials. Furthermore, the students had a stronger grasp on what engineering really is- problem solving and innovation. By allowing the camper’s room for error during their labs, they learned the trail and error process of being an engineer. We let them figure out solutions on their own and gave them information that they needed to solve the problems they were facing. At the end of the week, many of the students indicated a strong interest in Paper Science Engineering as a major. An even bigger portion told counselors that they bragged about how fun the Paper Science camp was in comparison to their friends attending other engineering camps. Being a part of this impact was a wonderful experience for all the campers as it always is for the faculty. A huge thanks to the campers, faculty, and counselors for making all of this happen!