News Detail
Laser Focus
Students employ laser for groundbreaking scientific research
Introduction
Equipped with a state-of-the-art laser loaned to RE by a parent, the support of hardworking faculty members, and their own unrelenting ingenuity, a handful of Ransom Everglades students participated in groundbreaking scientific research last summer that almost immediately earned national recognition. The students, who ranged in age from 14 to 18, barely knew each other when they started congregating around the 400-pound laser system that had arrived from the Frost Museum of Science to Room 301 of the Math/Science Building in June 2019. Working under the leadership of faculty members Dr. Claudia Ochatt and Dr. Luis Felipe, the students helped unravel a series of interdisciplinary problems that arose as they sought to detect heavy metal contaminants in salt water from Biscayne Bay. They offered contributions from distinct fields – chemistry, engineering and computer science – to jointly develop a brand-new, multifaceted approach to the detection using the relatively new technique of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy. Elements of the students’ remarkable work earned top prizes in science poster competitions among fields of collegians and doctoral candidates, and additional abstracts related to the research will be submitted for peer review in the coming weeks and months.
The laser loaned to RE by Dr. Ted Caplow P’25 arrived from the Frost Museum of Science June 17. This was quite a boon for us to receive, this portable device that had been invented to allow for wider access to this relatively new technique of chemical analysis, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy. ‘Portable’ meant a 400-pound system with significant electronics and lenses and optics and software – it took seven people to carry this equipment into our lab, and two full days to set it up. The laser was designed to help detect heavy metals in solid samples and is currently used by NASA to study the composition of the surface of Mars; however, no one had developed an easy, reproducible and safe technique to allow it to be used on liquid samples. Only solids had been tested successfully. Liquids would just splatter. That was a problem for us because we wanted to study metal contaminants in the bay. We needed to figure out: How are we going to solidify these samples?
Equipped with a state-of-the-art laser loaned to RE by a parent, the support of hardworking faculty members, and their own unrelenting ingenuity, a handful of Ransom Everglades students participated in groundbreaking scientific research last summer that almost immediately earned national recognition. The students, who ranged in age from 14 to 18, barely knew each other when they started congregating around the 400-pound laser system that had arrived from the Frost Museum of Science to Room 301 of the Math/Science Building in June 2019. Working under the leadership of faculty members Dr. Claudia Ochatt and Dr. Luis Felipe, the students helped unravel a series of interdisciplinary problems that arose as they sought to detect heavy metal contaminants in salt water from Biscayne Bay. They offered contributions from distinct fields – chemistry, engineering and computer science – to jointly develop a brand-new, multifaceted approach to the detection using the relatively new technique of laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy. Elements of the students’ remarkable work earned top prizes in science poster competitions among fields of collegians and doctoral candidates, and additional abstracts related to the research will be submitted for peer review in the coming weeks and months.
The laser loaned to RE by Dr. Ted Caplow P’25 arrived from the Frost Museum of Science June 17. This was quite a boon for us to receive, this portable device that had been invented to allow for wider access to this relatively new technique of chemical analysis, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy. ‘Portable’ meant a 400-pound system with significant electronics and lenses and optics and software – it took seven people to carry this equipment into our lab, and two full days to set it up. The laser was designed to help detect heavy metals in solid samples and is currently used by NASA to study the composition of the surface of Mars; however, no one had developed an easy, reproducible and safe technique to allow it to be used on liquid samples. Only solids had been tested successfully. Liquids would just splatter. That was a problem for us because we wanted to study metal contaminants in the bay. We needed to figure out: How are we going to solidify these samples?
Two college students, Emily Orme from Augustana College and Melissa Fernandez from Florida International University, had worked with the laser at Frost Science and helped me set it up. They took the lead on the issue of how to handle the bay water samples. They were joined by Clara Villalba ’22, Isa Ciocca ’20 and Khushi Shah ’19, who answered my call for lab assistants and showed up to join our team. The girls at first tried freezing the samples – with dry ice and at different temperatures. They tried different techniques to turn them into gels.
The other problem we had: since no one had previously tested liquid samples with laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy, there were no available containers to hold the samples. There was literally nothing available anywhere. So I walked over to RE engineering and robotics teacher Bob DuBard and asked him if he had any students who could help us design what we needed. Max Vallone ’22 and Josh Buttrick ’22 were working on robotics in the summer at RE. I asked the two boys and they jumped at the opportunity.
They were thrilled to join this project, and they barely knew what it was. They asked us all sorts of questions, and started designing containers in AutoCAD. We needed a container that wouldn’t interfere with the measurement. We needed a container that wouldn’t be contaminated with the samples, and was reusable. It had to be impenetrable, and it had to avoid spilling the samples. They worked on a bunch of designs, and we finally found one that worked. They used one of our 3D printers to print the container. It cost two cents to produce.
Meanwhile, the girls settled on the best technique for working with the samples – adding three percent agarose to create a gel. In three-and-a-half weeks, the girls tested 60,000 samples. They were so determined. I would stay until 11 p.m. or later every day, and I would kick them out at 7 p.m. to go home to their families. They asked if they could come at 6 a.m. instead of 7 a.m. I was tired, sleeping about four hours a night, but I didn’t feel it. The rush was incredible. We worked so well in tandem. It was full collaboration. We were all colleagues, from 14 years old to whatever the oldest was. Thanks to the girls’ efforts, we had solidified the samples. Thanks to Max and Josh, we had a container that would hold them. But when we fired the laser at the samples, and studied the emission spectra produced, we had trouble identifying the heavy metals. With much effort working with databases from the National Institute of Standards, we eventually identifed zinc, mercury, copper, nickel and iron.
They were thrilled to join this project, and they barely knew what it was. They asked us all sorts of questions, and started designing containers in AutoCAD. We needed a container that wouldn’t interfere with the measurement. We needed a container that wouldn’t be contaminated with the samples, and was reusable. It had to be impenetrable, and it had to avoid spilling the samples. They worked on a bunch of designs, and we finally found one that worked. They used one of our 3D printers to print the container. It cost two cents to produce.
Meanwhile, the girls settled on the best technique for working with the samples – adding three percent agarose to create a gel. In three-and-a-half weeks, the girls tested 60,000 samples. They were so determined. I would stay until 11 p.m. or later every day, and I would kick them out at 7 p.m. to go home to their families. They asked if they could come at 6 a.m. instead of 7 a.m. I was tired, sleeping about four hours a night, but I didn’t feel it. The rush was incredible. We worked so well in tandem. It was full collaboration. We were all colleagues, from 14 years old to whatever the oldest was. Thanks to the girls’ efforts, we had solidified the samples. Thanks to Max and Josh, we had a container that would hold them. But when we fired the laser at the samples, and studied the emission spectra produced, we had trouble identifying the heavy metals. With much effort working with databases from the National Institute of Standards, we eventually identifed zinc, mercury, copper, nickel and iron.
We knew what the metals’ emission spectra looked like, but the problem was our data showed a lot of ‘noise.’ It was extremely labor-intensive to separate the signals of metals we were looking for from all of the background information.
So we went to RE science teacher Luis Felipe. The timing was fortuitous in that he was developing the curriculm for a new data science class at RE.
Luis looked at our data and advised us. He said that, instead of looking by hand at the pattern of emissions, we should train an algorithm to detect the contamination so we wouldn’t have to do it ourselves. Joseph Gross ’20, Ben Thorpe ’20 and Felipe Sarmiento ’20 jumped in to help. They worked with Dr. Felipe in the computer language Python. Joseph identified the best machine-learning algorithm to help “clean” the background information. His technique allows you to see only what you are looking for: the peaks produced by heavy metals. It had never been done before.
Every single one of the techniques the students developed – figuring out how to prepare the samples, producing a container for the samples and determining how to quickly isolate the data of interest – were new discoveries. Our students did not do something that had been done before; they broke new ground. They will be cited for life for their work.
That’s why the judges were so blown away in California. (Gross, Vallone and Buttrick earned two of five student awards presented at the Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies SciX 2019 conference in Palm Springs, Calif., on Oct. 13, and Orme, the Augustana student who worked on the gelation, also was recognized for her poster. No other high school students even won entry into the poster session, which featured 42 posters from college and graduate students from around the world. Gross also won first prize two months later for the same poster at the University of Miami’s Big Data Conference and VizUM Symposium, where he topped two University of Miami students.)
Every day we were doing top-notch science. It was so powerful. I don’t need anything else to keep me going but that energy. The students who participated are working on a number of other science abstracts that will eventually be submitted for peer review. And there is much more we can do with this laser. We can use it in the summers and through clubs, incorporate it into the classroom. This can be done by everyone. It doesn’t need to be the top students in the class. Every student in the class could bring in a grain of sand and make a difference.
So we went to RE science teacher Luis Felipe. The timing was fortuitous in that he was developing the curriculm for a new data science class at RE.
Luis looked at our data and advised us. He said that, instead of looking by hand at the pattern of emissions, we should train an algorithm to detect the contamination so we wouldn’t have to do it ourselves. Joseph Gross ’20, Ben Thorpe ’20 and Felipe Sarmiento ’20 jumped in to help. They worked with Dr. Felipe in the computer language Python. Joseph identified the best machine-learning algorithm to help “clean” the background information. His technique allows you to see only what you are looking for: the peaks produced by heavy metals. It had never been done before.
Every single one of the techniques the students developed – figuring out how to prepare the samples, producing a container for the samples and determining how to quickly isolate the data of interest – were new discoveries. Our students did not do something that had been done before; they broke new ground. They will be cited for life for their work.
That’s why the judges were so blown away in California. (Gross, Vallone and Buttrick earned two of five student awards presented at the Federation of Analytical Chemistry and Spectroscopy Societies SciX 2019 conference in Palm Springs, Calif., on Oct. 13, and Orme, the Augustana student who worked on the gelation, also was recognized for her poster. No other high school students even won entry into the poster session, which featured 42 posters from college and graduate students from around the world. Gross also won first prize two months later for the same poster at the University of Miami’s Big Data Conference and VizUM Symposium, where he topped two University of Miami students.)
Every day we were doing top-notch science. It was so powerful. I don’t need anything else to keep me going but that energy. The students who participated are working on a number of other science abstracts that will eventually be submitted for peer review. And there is much more we can do with this laser. We can use it in the summers and through clubs, incorporate it into the classroom. This can be done by everyone. It doesn’t need to be the top students in the class. Every student in the class could bring in a grain of sand and make a difference.
Dr. Claudia Ochatt
STEM faculty member
STEM faculty member
How did RE get access to a laser?
Dr. Ted Caplow P’25 and Nathalie Manzano, joint developers of the Miami Science Barge and Inventors-in-Residence program at Frost Science, offered to loan a portable laser to RE and support research at the school.
“Nathalie and I developed this program for Frost Science, where it ran for a year,” Caplow said. “We moved it to Ransom Everglades after seeing that students as young as 15 or 16 were doing remarkable and important toxicological research with the laser. Our goal is to build a bridge between working scientists and Ransom Everglades students.
When the laser arrived at RE last summer, students, scientists and faculty immediately put creative ideas into action with projects ranging from engineering to forensics to environmental science. We are very proud of the entire team and hope it will grow this year!”
“Nathalie and I developed this program for Frost Science, where it ran for a year,” Caplow said. “We moved it to Ransom Everglades after seeing that students as young as 15 or 16 were doing remarkable and important toxicological research with the laser. Our goal is to build a bridge between working scientists and Ransom Everglades students.
When the laser arrived at RE last summer, students, scientists and faculty immediately put creative ideas into action with projects ranging from engineering to forensics to environmental science. We are very proud of the entire team and hope it will grow this year!”
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Founded in 1903, Ransom Everglades School is a coeducational, college preparatory day school for grades 6 - 12 located on two campuses in Coconut Grove, Florida. Ransom Everglades School produces graduates who "believe that they are in the world not so much for what they can get out of it as for what they can put into it." The school provides rigorous college preparation that promotes the student's sense of identity, community, personal integrity and values for a productive and satisfying life, and prepares the student to lead and to contribute to society.