Calif. High School Students Study Biofuels for Earth Day
High school students in Redwood City, Calif. will be studying biofuel production to mark Earth Day 2011. Photo: Dr. Kristin Milks
Students in one San Francisco Bay Area high school will celebrate Earth Day next month by delving into the clean tech sector, studying the process of biofuel production.
Across the country this April, high school students whose teachers are Knowles Science Teaching Foundation fellows and alumni will be undertaking environmentally focused projects to mark Earth Day 2011.
Established in 1999, the foundation aims to improve math and science in the U.S. by awarding early-career teachers with a five-year fellowship that provides them with classroom materials, professional development and other resources.
Dr. Kirstin Milks, a Knowles Fellow, teaches an elective class on biotechnology at Sequoia High School in Redwood City on the San Francisco Peninsula, a hotbed of biotech and clean tech companies. Around Earth Day, her students will perform experiments with enzymes that mimic the process that biotech companies use to produce biofuel.
“Enzymes are proteins that are molecular machines. They make chemical reactions happen faster,” Milks said. “Enzymes are used in biotech to make products. They make milk into cheese or make jeans look stonewashed.”
Students will use enzymes to break down plant cellulose – “the stuff in plants that makes them crunchy,” Milks explains.
Students will study cellulose disintegration with and without enzymes and under different conditions – different acid levels or temperatures. Students will then have to locate and extract an enzyme that breaks down cellulose in mushrooms from the grocery store.
With readings outside the experiment, Milks will connect the students to the Bay Area’s biotech and clean tech sectors and discuss the challenges facing mass production of biofuel.
There are at least ten biotech startups in the Bay Area, as well as labs at UC Berkeley and Stanford University, that are searching for enzymes that will turn plant matter into usable fuel on a mass scale, Milks said.
“One of the biggest issues [in replacing fossil fuels with biofuels] is that these enzymes can only work to produce biofuel in small quantities,” she said. “It’s also hard to set up the infrastructure to produce biofuels – setting up the fields to grow the plants and the factories to produce the fuel to make enough yield to make it worth the upfront cost.”
Milks says her students get most excited about experiments that deal with real-world issues.
“The best thing about the Knowles Fellowship is that it encourages science teachers to bring real-world applications to the classroom,” she said.
Across the country in Hammondsport, New York, students will participate in Earth Day with their Knowles Fellow teacher by working in a community garden to study butterflies as an indicator species for environmental health. Students in Fisher, Illinois, will learn about the decline of the North American bumblebee population and repopulation efforts by planting bumblebee-friendly flowers near their school.
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