Mobile lab teaches the importance of math and science in the workplace

By Cathy Spaulding
Phoenix Staff Writer

July 23, 2008 12:13 am

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A laser beam burns glaring white against a plastic plate and the Nintendo character Yoshi takes shape.
Yoshi’s creation comes not from hands guiding the beam but a programmed computer copying an image on a monitor.
This is how students learn laser lithography at the METS Skills on Wheels Mobile Lab sponsored by Ponca City’s Pioneer Technology Center. METS stands for Manufacturing Education Training System.
The Pioneer center has parked a tractor-trailer containing the mobile lab on the Indian Capital Technology Center parking lot to show students and the public the importance of math and science in the workplace. Pioneer and Indian Capital are part of Oklahoma’s Career Tech System. The public can tour the lab this afternoon after students use it, said Johnnie Wardwell, curriculum specialist with Indian Capital.
Students taking part in Indian Capital’s Manufacturing Exploration and Experience (ME-2) camp used computers to make three-dimensional objects or etch images onto plastic or other surfaces. They said they were challenged by the programs.
“It’s hard, but it’s fun,” said Muskogee High School sophomore Erik Johnson, who was designing a computer image paying tribute to a favorite basketball player, Cleveland Cavalier LeBron James. He and the other ME-2 students were designing images to be etched, like Yoshi, with the lab’s 25-watt laser etcher.
Checotah ninth-grader Noah Kaulay said he found the whole process interesting.
“It’s easy to learn, but very sophisticated,” he said.
Students agreed they needed to know math to operate the laser etcher.
“You have to know how to find X, Y and Z,” Erik said.
That’s algebra, a basic component of G-Code, the code used to position the tool, said Pioneer Tech industrial training coordinator Laurence Beliel, who was teaching the METS class.
“You have to know that to tell the machine how fast to go, how deep to cut, how large to draw,” Beliel said. “You’re using coordinates.”
Beliel said whole METS lab concept began with his son’s third-grade homework. He said his son was learning basic components of geometry and trigonometry and he asked “the question everybody asked: ‘Why do I have to learn this?’”
The mobile skills lab was created to help young people understand the value of math and science in the workplace, a Pioneer Technology Center Web site said. The lab features 10 computer workstations with three-dimensional computer assisted design software and a computer numerical control mill, which makes those designs a reality.
The mill uses “material that looks like a weed-eater string inside the machine, then uses a high-temperature extrusion needle to cut it into beads,” Beliel said.
The beads are then layered, bead-by-bead to form the ball or dragon or whatever else was designed, he said.
The ME-2 students are participating in a week-long camp at Indian Capital. Schools include Checotah, Muskogee, Hilldale, Warner, St. Joseph and Braggs.

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