Cardinal Middle School competed in its seventh consecutive state Future City competition earlier in January.
Future City Competition
Cardinal Middle School competed in its seventh consecutive state Future City competition earlier in January. Eighth-graders Anna L., Carlie W. and Aubriegh K. did a wonderful job presenting in front of the panel.
The Future City competition is a national program sponsored by the engineering community to promote an interest in technology and engineering in middle school students through hands-on, real world applications. This year’s competition challenge was titled, “Clean Water: Tap into Tomorrow.” Congratulations to the team and to advisor Shaun Spence on a job well done.
Third-Grade Water Lab
Third-graders have been studying natural resources and have learned that water is a renewable resource. However, they have also learned that pollution makes less of the natural resource available for drinking water.
During a recent experiment in the science lab, teacher Barb Tropf had students work in groups to create a water filter. Students could choose from any combination of soil, sand, gravel, cotton and/or shredded paper to make a water filter. Once their filter was in place, they poured “polluted” water, or water that contained dish soap, salt, food dye and sand, into their container to see if their filter could remove the pollution from the water. The idea was to give students a sense of which resources filtered the pollutants out the best. While no group got clear water, several did manage to get lighter colored water after running it through their filter. The final test was to let the water evaporate and see which pollutants, if any, were left in their containers.
