Subscribe
Community
Physics students send vehicles under water
Friday, March 12, 2010
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by DARWIN WEIGEL
Patuxent High School senior Phillip Campbell, 17, launches an underwater vehicle he and fellow senior Joshua Weeks, 17, built for a speed test run Wednesday at the Hilton Garden Inn in Solomons. Students from the AP physics class have been working on the remote controlled underwater vehicles since last fall with the help of Bill Bankhead of the Naval Sea Systems Command.
|
E-Mail This Article
With temperatures rising, a group of Patuxent High School students spent Wednesday afternoon by the pool.
However, being advanced placement physics students, they were using the time productively.
"This is my top class," said Patuxent High School teacher Barbara Redgate, who brought the class to the pool at the Hilton Garden Inn in Solomons to test out unmanned underwater vehicles that the students made themselves.
Redgate said that every Wednesday the class has worked with William Bankhead of the Naval Sea Systems Command in Washington, D.C.
Bankhead, Redgate said, has been doing presentations "on how critical it is for students to be involved in the top level of technology."
She continued that his company donated all of the materials to build the vehicles, which the students put together with some guidance from Bankhead.
"Building all these underwater vehicles and seeing that these actually work … this is the most important part of the year," Redgate said. " … This is the future; unmanned vehicles are the future whether they are aviation or water."
Redgate also wanted to thank Patrick Welton, the hotel's general manager, for letting the class use the pool for the day.
Patuxent junior Chapin Cofod of Lusby said the materials needed to construct the vehicles came in a kit including pipes, motors and "film floaties."
Though Cofod, 17, said that his class has been working on the vehicles about once a week since the fall, he said the actual assembly process was pretty laid back.
"We had a manual and it was pretty much step by step; it wasn't too difficult," he said.
Cofod's classmate, junior Kieran Kelly of Lusby, said the ultimate goal for the vehicles was "to do pretty much everything in the water.
"We want it to go up and down, forward and backward; you could build it for speed or maneuverability," Kelly, 17, said, adding that he had fun building the vehicle and testing it out.
Bankhead, a Lusby resident, said that he was thrilled with what he saw demonstrated Wednesday.
"This is great … I'm tired of people talking about [the nationwide science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, initiative] so we are out doing things for STEM," said Bankhead, who continued that he always tries have some type of project going on with students of any age level.
With the Patuxent group, Bankhead said, "I'm just mentoring the students and keeping them safe and giving them an opportunity to get it all done."
He said that because the school was so safety conscience, "the only danger was that they'd fail to complete it."
Redgate said projects such as this will ultimately lead to a safer world.
"The safety factor that this brings to any human being is so important … with these unmanned vehicles being used nobody has to worry about a human inside getting hurt," Redgate said, adding, "And these are the future engineers."
