Challenge+2010

**Sea Perch Institute Challenge 2010: Shipwreck!**
For the 2009-2010 academic year, MITSG worked with Meridian Academy (Brookline, MA), Minuteman Regional High School (Lexington, MA), Rogers High School (Newport, RI), and Swampscott Middle School (Swampscott, MA). For these schools, MIT Sea Grant has provided monthly classroom visits, mentoring, professional development opportunities, cost-sharing of supplies and materials as well as opportunities to bring students to MIT to tour labs and test vehicles. The students spent the year engaged in hands-on learning in “real world” situations through simulated engineering experiences in marine robotics.

At the June 1, 2010 event, students will be presented with a complex problem to resolve using their Sea Perch vehicles: A cargo ship has gone down in Boston Harbor and the student groups must respond using their Sea Perches for mapping, water quality analysis, and recovery if indicated. To simulate the challenge, a model ship with cargo will be sunk in the Zesiger pool. The four schools will work progressively, cooperatively, and against the clock to complete this mission. Each school has been assigned a task and must complete their work within 45 minutes.:

**Meridian Academy**: Mapping. Using their Sea Perches, the Meridian Academy students must find and map the location of the wreck and cargo.

**Swampscott Middle School**: Water quality. The Swampscott students, using the map provided by the Meridian students will collect and analyze water samples from around the wreck using their specialized Sea Perch vehicles. These students must determine if anything is leaking from the wrecked ship or its cargo and if so, whether the substance(s) are hazardous. Students will mark the site(s) of any contamination sites on the map.

**Rogers High School**: Cargo recovery. Using Sea Perches fitted with grabber arms, the Rogers students must recover the cargo containers, starting with those deemed most hazardous by the Swampscott students.

**Minuteman Regional High Schoo**l: Ship recovery or relocation. With the wreck now lightened by the Rogers students cargo recovery operation, the Lexington students must use their Sea Perches to determine if they can raise the ship to the surface and bring it to shore, or take it “out to sea,” sink it, and use it for an artificial reef.

MIT Educators Contact Info 2011 Challenge Participants
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