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October 3, 2024
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Frisch Students Highlight Science and Engineering Research

Paramus—The students at the Frisch School recently hosted its first annual Science Research and Engi­neering Symposium night, an event dedicated to showcasing some of the phenomenal projects Frisch stu­dents have created and researched in the school’s engineering and bi­ology research classes. These class­es, taught by Mrs. Rifkie Silverman and Dr. Mindy Furman, respective­ly, allow students to explore the sci­ences and math in a way that is not available in most schools. Parents of students, as well as alumni and com­munity members, came to see the amazing things that the students were showcasing in a cafeteria trans­formed with all of the projects that the students had created.

Engineering is a two-year course offered to freshmen and sopho­mores in which they learn basic en­gineering skills and create projects that display their talents. The course taught a basic understanding of how circuits work and included a detailed unit on how to code an Arduino, an open-source electronic prototyping platform based on flexible and easy-to-use software. The students in the class were thus able to gain the ba­sic skills needed to create their own distinct projects that can benefit so­ciety. Some of the highlights includ­ed a robotic hand that could be used to assist doctors in surgery, a lie de­tector that used many sensors to de­termine whether one was telling the truth, and a closet organizer to ben­efit the color-blind. These projects, as well as several more, were a cul­mination of what the students had learned in their class. They utilized their new knowledge in order to ap­ply it to a current societal issue and create a solution, which led to many creative and impressive inventions.

The other displays were those created as a product of the biolo­gy research class. Working collabo­ratively with the Waksman program at Rutgers, this class allows each stu­dent to individually study a specif­ic gene from a unique plant known as duckweed. Students spend time in the lab picking individual genes from a CDNA library, and amplifying that DNA using a process called PCR (polymerase chain reaction) in or­der to then estimate the size of the inserts. Once determined, that infor­mation was sent to Rutgers and se­quenced. Each student had the op­portunity to study multiple proteins and gain an understanding of how each protein works. This gave each student a deeper understanding of how these proteins impact the way duckweed behaves in the environ­ment. The students gained a fuller understanding of the impact of each protein on an organism, and the pro­ject exposed them to scientific sub­jects they had not previously seen.

Both of these classes give stu­dents real-life skills that are easily helping to shape their capabilities and are sure to impact their interests in life. The hands-on environment al­lows each student to learn by doing and everyone gains so much out of his/her work. Overall, the night was successful in showing the incredible engineering and biological accom­plishments of the students, while at the same time inspiring them to con­tinue their studies in these fields of innovation.

By Debra Paul and Shira Levie

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