Wastewater Treatment Engineering: East Side Community High School

Joe Vincente - 10th grade chemistry

Post on White House Blog about 2010 event

Lesson Description:

Every May since 2010, I have been collaborating with Joe Vincente at East Side Community High School (ESCHS) to give his students a lesson and hands-on activity on wastewater treatment and what it's like to be an engineer in charge of treating water. The lesson consists of Joe Vincente and I explaining what the various methods are for wastewater treatment, posing a problem to the students wherein they are engineers in charge of treating a certain amount of wastewater (one million gallons per day), and having them perform tests using the techniques they have learned in their chemistry class in order to quantify the cost of achieving their engineering goal.

Typically we do the activity with five sections of 10-20 students and then have an afterschool pizza party where I answer students' questions about Cooper Union, what engineers do, what my background was, etc.

Pre-lesson video (SchoolTube):