Eighth graders to compete at Pudue University

Carleton — Students at St. Patrick School in Carleton have taken science to a whole new level, all powered by a NASA program.

Backed by a renewed science curriculum under the guidance of science teacher Maureen Wickenheiser, two St. Patrick students, eighth-grader Andrew Wickenheiser and seventh-grader Gracie Bylow, will be competing in NASA’s Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment – GLOBE – Midwest regional competition at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., on May 19-20.

The NASA GLOBE program came to St. Patrick this year after Maureen Wickenheiser completed the NASA Satellite Training Program to become a NASA GLOBE teacher, a program that promotes scientific discovery in the classroom using the latest measuring instruments and sharing data from classroom observations with the world.

“With the science curriculum, I had to go through 50 hours of training to be a NASA GLOBE teacher,” Maureen Wickenheiser said. “Students learn how to use GPS, an anemometer for measuring wind speed, soil moisture testing equipment to test the capabilities of the soil.”

The program connects St. Patrick with other schools around the world, so students can see how their data compares to other places.

“It gives them a chance to see there are other students out there,” Maureen Wickenheiser said. “It’s nice when we’re able to talk to a school in Alaska, asking about the auroras and they are asking us about the Great Lakes, and we’re comparing data on our winters.”



St. Patrick has had great success in science fairs, with four students earning honors at the Monroe County Science Fair in the grades 5-6 competition, and three receiving honors in the grades 7-8 competition.

St. Patrick sent seven students to the Science and Engineering Fair of Metro Detroit at Cobo Center, with all seven of them placing.

Students also traveled to the University of Toledo, where once again St. Patrick took home hardware by winning the K-3 division, placing first and second in both grades 4-6 and grades 7-8, respectively.

Now Andrew and Gracie are off to the Midwest Regional competition at Purdue, where they’ll compete with students from eight states.

Andrew’s project involved testing how nitrate and rock salt affect daphnia, small planktonic creatures that live in water.

“For the first stage of my project, I took daphnia eggs and raised them in a laboratory, put them in a tank with rock salt and another group of daphnia and put them in a tank without rock salt. The rock salt lowered the dissolved oxygen level in the water, making it harder for the daphnia to live. I was interested in this project because I wanted to see how the rock salts you put on the road and the nitrates they put on corn affects water quality.”

Gracie’s project involved recreating a silk fabric dyed with beetles from the Cahuachi Desert in Peru, doing a mordant process on fabric to see which dyes best holds their color.

“There is an underground temple from 350 AD they found with a satellite photo, and when they sent researchers down there, they found mummies in blankets dyed with beetles,” Gracie said. “With my project, I wanted to see which substances I would use to dye my clothes if I was a citizen of their people in 350.”