Iesha Grady and Representative Doyle

Iesha is the first Penn Hills student in the 17-year history of the competition to win the event. As a result of her outstanding work and dedication, Southwest Airlines will fly her and her mother to Washington, DC, in June to see her artwork unveiled. It will be hung in the halls of the U.S. Capitol Building for one year along with other winners from around the country, providing the opportunity for hundreds of thousands of people to see her work. Iesha is undecided about where she will be attending college in the fall.

 

In addition, Penn Hills Senior Jasper Means won 4th place for his watercolor painting of an Outer Banks beach house entitled "Life Saving Station #7."  Jasper's work will be displayed for one year in Representative Doyle's Pittsburgh office.  In April, also Jasper won a scholarship from the Penn Art Association for his extraordinary artwork and excellent grades.  He will be attending Corcoran College of Art & Design in the fall, majoring in Fine Arts.

"I did better than expected with the piece I submitted," Jasper said.  "It was an older piece and one I didn't feel represented my current work very well."  He went on to say that, "Regardless, I felt really good about how the piece did and I am honored to have it displayed in Mike Doyle's office."

"I have had the pleasure of having both Iesha and Jasper in my Art I, Art II, and Studio Art classes over the past three school years," Teacher Jason Korpa said at the May School Board meeting.  "During this time," he added, "It has been truly amazing to watch them develop into the District's top two artists."

Recently, Penn Hills Senior High School became one of three high schools in the Pittsburgh area to use a Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). This took place in Deana Foley's Applied and AP Chemistry classes.

 

An SEM uses a beam of electrons to "see" very small things, down to 1 billionth of a meter (1 nanometer), which is five hundred times smaller than the best light microscope. The ultimate goal of the project was to answer a simple question, namely, "were the headlights on when they were broken?"  This question had to be answered as part of a court case.

 

Modern car headlights are filled with different gases but contain no oxygen. Filaments in the bulbs get very hot when they are on. If the car's headlights were on when they broke, the filament would become oxidized. Oxygen in the air would react with the metal in the filament making metallic oxide. An SEM is the perfect instrument to see if this reaction occurred. It can magnify things over 20,000 times and determine its composition using x-ray analysis. As part of the project, the filament was tested using an SEM, and several pieces of metallic oxide were found on it. This proved that the headlights were on when they were broken.

 

Students Gavin Davis (front) and Brian Burkhouse (back) with SEM

Mrs. Foley's chemistry students had a lot to learn before they could answer this question.  The first step was to let the students see what this high magnification looked like using some familiar items from biology. They looked at ten different specimens, ranging from human blood cells to a housefly's mouth. The virtual SEM had no controls the students could alter, but it did allow them to see the relationship between structure and function. One example is that a human bone looks like a sponge when viewed using an SEM, full of tiny tunnels and passageways. They actually saw the structure that allows the cells to receive nutrients from our bodies. The next step was to learn how an SEM works and seeing what it can do. This "virtual" microscope was much more complex. It had images from the "Big 3" types of microscopes--light, electron, and atomic force. Every time the students changed magnification, they had to adjust the focus, brightness, and contrast to get the best image. It took some practice. Students viewed short animations on the "Big 3," each of them with different strengths, weaknesses, and purposes. They all work differently, but they all have some things in common.

 

Mrs. Foley's students got to know the similarities and differences between these types of microscopes. After their training, the students had to determine the size of their specimen, what elements it contained, and how big of an area they sampled. They measured and calculated that they could fit 7,700 specimens on the head of pin. The final step in the process was to actually use a real SEM. The SEM was located at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in the Materials Research Lab. The students controlled it via the Internet and a special computer loaned to the Senior High School by CMU. It took practice, but some of the students did see the metallic oxide on the filament.

 

The project was a tremendous opportunity for our students to learn using state-of-the-art technology.  "Here at Penn Hills," Data/Math Coach James Schultz stated, "We are indeed doing great things!"

 

Special thanks go to those at Penn Hills Senior High School who made this possible-Mrs. Foley, Brian Brown, Karen Schmitt, Russ Seibert, Sally Shirer, Lee Zelkowitz, Patrick Gavin, Christopher Horne, and Eric Kostic. Thanks also go to Dr. Marc De Graef and Judith Hallinen of CMU for allowing Data/Math Coach James Schultz to attend the SEM workshop and providing the microscopes, skills, staff, and vision to make this learning experience a reality for our students. Finally, thanks go out to the organizations and staff whose resources our students used: National Science Foundation, Leonard Gelfand Center For Service Learning and Outreach, ASPEX Corporation, Phenom Corporation, NASA, Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, Discovery Education, and Dr. Shreya Bhattacharyya-McCamy of Nanoscience Instruments, Incorporated.  (special thanks to Mr. Schultz for providing the information for this article)

Two seniors from the Varsity Boys' Baseball Team had the opportunity to see their sport up close and personal at the professional level when they were invited to a Pirates game, with the opportunity to interact with the players beforehand.

 

J.D. Lydic, Neil Walker, and Brandon Klaus

Jon (J.D.) Lydic and Brandon Klaus joined Coaches Ed Carr and Joe Capobianco at the Pirates-Mets game in May. The four had the opportunity to watch batting practice, meet the players, and tour the facility before taking their seats along the third base line for the game. The students also received a gift bag that included a Major League ball to get signed while in the dugout. In return, the students sent Pirates Representative and Penn Hills Alum Michelle Mejia a thank you card (with Starbucks gift cards enclosed) and a Penn Hills baseball hat signed by them. The Pirates were gracious enough to defeat the Mets 5-4.

 

Coach Carr said it is not often you get to watch Major Leaguers take swings from field level and see how they prepare for a game. "The guys were extremely excited and grateful," Coach Carr said, adding that "the smiles did not leave their faces all night." J.D. told him that it was "something he'll remember for the rest of his life."