COLLABORATION, KIDS AND SPIDERS

Doug Shattuck, Concord Middle School Teacher, Former Rotarian and winner of the Teacher of the Year award from the MA Technology/Engineering Collaborative spoke to the Sunrise Club Jan. 24. All MA middle schools must offer an engineering curriculum and Doug certainly designed a hands-on experience for students. In collaboration with MIT's Laboratory for Atomistic and Molecular Mechanics and the electron microscope company JEOL, Concord Middle School students studied complex web construction, investigating properties of spider webs for mechanical properties such as strength. The students gave a poster presentation of their findings at a scientific symposium where the audience was unaware that they were Middle School students!  Photo: Douglas Shattuck