Waiakea High School GEER Final Report

Packing Sessions:  Students pack hand sanitizer in bottles.  Students count and pack face masks.  Both general education and FSC (fully self-contained) students are involved.  The PPE packed at these sessions is distributed by Malama I’a at their various community events such as community testing and vaccine clinics.

Vaccine Clinics:  Students volunteer at the clinics.  Students dress up as heroes to fit the “Keiki Hero” theme of the clinics.  They cheer on young children as the children come to receive a COVID vaccine.

Merrie Monarch Health Screening:  Students joined the safety committee to help screen guests at the Merri Monarch festivities.

1. Waiakea High students are involved in our community response to COVID
2. .Students can gain community service hours, which has been difficult during the pandemic.
3. Students gain leadership experience.

We’ve had to find a balance between providing opportunities for our students to get involved while also helping their own health and safety as our top priority.

After receiving simple CO2 monitors from the department of Health we were fascinated with the idea of measuring CO2 levels in classrooms and correlating it to possible COVID risks.  These simple devices were not able to log data so we obtained 5 Winsen model MH-Z19 CO2 sensors and connected them to raspberry pi units. With help from a mentor we programmed them, using node red, to be able to record CO2 levels every 30 seconds for as long a period as we wanted.  We set these units up in various classrooms around campus and analyzed the data.  To our surprise we were seeing a rise and fall in CO2 levels independent of the occupation of the classroom.  We were obviously reading something other than CO2 or we were measuring CO2 sources not connected to human activity.  We did several experiments to determine the source of the CO2 variability and finally decided to try another sensor to repeat the experiment.  Consulting with atmospheric scientist Dr. Steve Howell, we purchased a more accurate sensor (adafruit SCD-30) and are now in the beginning stages of building the circuit on a pi and programming it to collect data for another round of experiments. 

Everything about the project was a success, even our failures.  Students learned to build a simple circuit to run the raspberry pi with the sensor, learned to program in node red, how to collect and analyze data, how to interpret data and more. The team was also able to present the project in November at an International Science Fair before a panel of judges and international students who asked questions and were interested in the project. 

The data we were getting really threw us for a loop.  Why were we getting spikes at random times when the classrooms were not in use.  All of us did research on things such as atmospheric tides, carbon cycles and more to try and figure out what was going on.  We even stumped atmospheric scientist Dr. Howell who did his own research to see why we were getting such strange results.  Working with the students we were able to design experiments to test the sensors themselves to see if the fault was in our programming or if it was due to something real in the atmosphere that was affecting the results.  We're convinced the sensors are reading something other than CO2 at times and giving false readings.  We're now working with a much more accurate sensor and hope to repeat the experiments and how CO2 levels fluctuate in classrooms with the hope that we can make them safer learning environments. 

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS:  (OPTIONAL)
One student mentions "the thinking behind trying to explain why we were getting such odd data is something I've never done before and am still trying to figure out". Another student mentioned the skills he learned while doing the project "I learned that carbon dioxide levels could estimate the risk of COVID-19 transmission and new technology skills such as programming in node red, using a raspberry pi 4, how to wire sensors to a pi, how to format and use CSV files to create graphs."