Natalie Frank works with students at The Portland Montessori School to test an experiment.
Over the course of two months, students collaboratively designed a fluid mechanics experiment to investigate how particles move across surfaces. This past November, those students presented their work at the American Physical Society — Division of Fluid Mechanics conference in Salt Lake City. In the coming months, their experiment will make its way to the International Space Station for astronauts to test and gather data. These students also happen to be in elementary school.
Last year, Portland State University embarked on a partnership with The Portland Montessori School (TPMS) to introduce complex scientific concepts to young minds, demystifying scientific principles and igniting a passion for discovery.
“Typically, when these kinds of activities are proposed, they're done for high school students. But they already know if they’re going into science or not,” said Daimler Professor of Mechanical and Materials Engineering Raul Cal. “By engaging at the elementary school age, it’s showing them that science is accessible. They can become scientists.”
The Portland Montessori School students present their findings at the American Physical Society — Division of Fluid Mechanics conference in Salt Lake City.
After time spent learning about the scientific method, the TPMS students (who are between 7 and 9 years old) worked together with Cal and Natalie Frank, Ph.D. candidate in mechanical engineering, to design an experiment that could help understand nutrient and microplastic movement in oceans and the formation of algae blooms in lakes.
“If you think about plastic debris in the ocean, or algae on the surface of a lake, there are a lot of different ways they can move and interact with one another; they can float, sink, separate, or cluster. Each one of these movements can be influenced by a list of variables; particle size, shape, material, density, number of particles, fluid composition, presence of waves, and more often than not, influenced by a combination of these parameters,” Frank said. “Understanding how these particles (pieces of plastic, clumps of algae) move at the surface or in the depths of a fluid is crucial for aggregate modeling. If we want to solve the ocean debris problem we must first understand how these pieces of debris interact with one another and the fluid they reside in.”
These movements were tested using a clear box of water containing various sized particles, and shaking the box at different frequencies.
"We prepared all of the instrumentation, and they went and they did the experiments, and they took recordings," Cal said. "My heart was exploding — just to see the way that they get excited and that they're engaged and hungry for knowledge."
Students from the Portland Montessori School work on their experiment with Natalie Frank.
Frank emphasized their shared goal to build the students’ confidence in scientific thinking.
“I hope that these students can walk away from this project feeling inspired to continue with their scientific curiosities, beyond the classroom, beyond this project,” she said.
Although the in-classroom work is complete, the research has just begun.
“The study we did together is highly fundamental, so we are really breaking this problem down to the basics,” Frank said. “This means the application and reach of this work is extremely broad and can be applied to any situation involving particles interacting with fluids.”
That’s why the next phase will bring the students’ design to the International Space Station. When the experiments — small containers of fluid — launch from the Kennedy Space Center this summer, the astronauts on board the ISS will use the students’ design to study particle-laden flow.
“The aim would be for the students to tell the astronauts what to do and how to run the experiment in space,” Cal said.
The success of this program has inspired Cal to look at bringing similar opportunities to public schools in Portland and potentially expanding to communities in Hawaii and Puerto Rico — with the goal to see if the same spark of scientific curiosity can be ignited across diverse populations.
“The remaining question is, how do you introduce these topics? How do you get similar behavior? Do you get similar excitement?” Cal added. “I think it would be incredible to do this in very different places altogether.”