RMA 8th grade STEAM students participated in a Global science competition through the Institute of Competition Sciences in conjunction with the University of Central Florida CLASS Exolith Laboratory and NASA Florida Space Grant Consortium. Their challenge was to design and conduct an experiment to grow plants in lunar soil simulant.
The Institute of Competition Sciences was founded in 2012 and is a champion and accelerant of learning - particularly in the STEM fields by focusing on Challenge-based learning. The Plant the Moon Challenge had a Science Advisory Board of NASA Scientists as well Academic and Associate members from around the world who read student reports and judged them on their experimental design, plant growth and report write up.
We had 4 teams conduct experiments and submit reports: Team Beans, Team Omelette, Team Ketchup and Team Weeds.
Please congratulate the following students:
Team Beans: Tyler Cripe, Sean Freund, Brendan Perry and Ezekiel Tabag for winning the Middle School Division: Plant Growth
Team Beans used Coconut Coir as their soil base, chicken tea as their fertilizer and green beans as their seeds. Their plants grew and even flowered and grew green beans!
Team Weeds: Maddie Altenbernd, Marlei Brown, Jade Carnahan, Grace Cosby, Kendall Rice, Emma Spisak, Madison Walker and Gabrielle Waples Middle School Division: Innovation Team weeds used potting soil, chicken tea as their fertilizer and dandelions as their seeds. Although their plants did not grow, the judges were impressed with their experimental design and knowledge gained even though their experiment was not successful.
Both Teams used our chickens as a fertilizer source by using their droppings to make Chicken tea - where chicken feces is steeped in water - Groups chose to water with Chicken Tea as they did not want to add artificial fertilizers if these experiments were repeated on the Moon and why not take advantage of a resource we have right on campus.
Although Team Ketchup (Katelyn Craft, Payton Harlan, Kyler Puffenburger, Gabrielle Sniffen, Gavon Sutphin, Ryann Taylor) and Team Omelette (Isabel Diehl, Ayla Holland, Tuline Katibi, Noah Levey, Katelynn Lorber, Andrew Pope, William Pope, Tyler Poulton, Gabrielle Rivera, Colin Shippey) did not win, they learned lessons through real-life experimentation, trial and error, failure is a part of science and even unsuccessful experiments are valuable.
Mrs. Stasny is so proud of your hard work! Please check out samples of their work below.