Lake Linden – Lake Linden-Hubbell’s four seventh-grade students who make up the team participating in the eCybermission 10-state regional competition call themselves “The Whiz Kids.” The team is comprised of Siona Beaudoin, Beau Hakala, Gabe Poirier and William Lyons.

The project the team completed is entitled “The Removal and Plating of Copper from Stamp Sands.” The project required the team to “develop a method to remove the copper from the stamp sand, and plate it onto a metal to be reused,” Beaudoin explained.

The team members selected this particular experiment for a reason.

“We thought that it would, like, get rid of the stamp sand and clean it up, and we’d be getting the copper out of it, so it would be profitable,” Beaudoin said

Gretchen Hein, of Michigan Tech’s Department of Engineering Fundamentals, began working with the students in December, 2015 and has served as adviser on the experiment, report and presentation.

“Scott Wendt of the Chemical Engineering Department at Michigan Tech helped the team come up with the experiment,” Hein said.

The team was required to develop an experimental procedure to test its hypothesis. They then had to conduct the experiment, collect, analyze and interpret the data.

The experiment involved measuring the pH and electrical conductivity of distilled water – as opposed to sulfuric and nitric acid solutions – and the pH levels of dissolved copper in the two solutions. They then divided solutions into three beakers for plating onto small, thin brass plates. The next step called for measuring the mass of each brass plate, setting up a plating circuit, and measuring the pH, conductivity and plate mass after the plating procedure was complete.

At no time were the students permitted to work directly with the acids, Hein said. Mir Sadri, of the Michigan Tech Engineering Fundamentals Department, conducted the acid portion of the experiments, Hein said. He also listened to their presentation and asked them questions.

The students said the report writing was quite taxing on them.

“We did a lot of writing,” Lyons said. “Every weekend, every week.”

“It was a lot of writing in the beginning,” Hakala added. “Once we had the base down, we just kept revising.”

“It’s like a 13-page report,” Beaudoin commented.