Winter Term Science Projects

This week students presented their final projects in the Winter Term Science class.  The individuals highlighted below chose to design an experiment in an attempt address an environmental issue on campus, and to raise awareness in the Burke Mountain Academy Community.

Peter Moe-Lang's research question was how much money and energy could be saved if the school switched from fluorescent to LED bulbs to light their buildings.  Some of his findings included a savings of hundreds of pounds of carbon dioxide, 13 more years of longevity, and around $200 per year (enough to buy more gates for the ski hill).  Rob, the Head of Maintenance, has already changed the bulbs in his office saving time, money and energy for larger campus projects!

Peter

Parker Biele researched how much space the Burke Mountain Academy community saves in the landfill by composting our waste instead of throwing all of our food waste in the dumpster.  For over a month she weighed the compost bin after each meal.  Parker found that annually we compost enough cubic feet of food waste to save at least an equivalent of at least 3 dumpster fulls of landfill space.  In addition, because the dumpster does not need to be emptied as frequently (the compost pick-up fee is minimal) we are saving the school hundreds of dollars.  Overall each individual averages about 5 gallons of food waste per month.  The take-home message was eat what you take, only take what you can eat.

Parker

The Winter Term math class played the stock market for three months.  No one lost money, but Forest van Dine earned over $2,000.  He is eager to begin investing his own money soon.  Pictured below, Shamus McKim, is presenting his stock market poster project to the class.  In addition to summarizing how he calculated his daily and final earnings, in his poster, Shamus highlighted the history of the stock market, how to read a stock page in a financial journal, how he chose his particular portfolio, and how he computed his overall percent increase of 10%.  Way to go Shamus!

Shamus