STEM-In-Action Fall Follow Up: The CQuestrators

Hello again! It's time to check in on our STEM-In-Action Grant winning teams! Over the next few months we will see posts from each of our winning teams to find out what they are up to this fall. In case you're just now tuning in, the U.S. Army Educational Outreach Program (AEOP) STEM-In-Action Grant awards eCYBERMISSION teams up to $5,000 to develop their projects into mature and scalable solutions in their community. Typically we award this honorary grant to five teams, but this year ten teams took home the prestigious award. The next team we're catching up with is The CQuestrators!

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Hello! We are the CQuestrators, consisting of 2 members, Varsha Gunda and Veda Murthy! We are 8th graders from Herndon, Virginia. We have been selected as one of the STEM-in-Action Grant recipients as well as winners in 7th grade for our project, the Carbon Sink Pellets.

We both met in an online class outside of school, and a few phone calls later we immediately became friends. We shared the same interests, and coincidentally found ourselves in the same classes together related to biology, chemistry, debate, math, etc. We also found it easier to collaborate outside of school because of the COVID pandemic. We both had a passion for the environment, and one of the main leading causes of global warming is carbon emissions. We both thought that this was an interesting topic and decided to work on it together as our problem. Veda had done ecybermission the previous year, and after meeting me we both decided that it would be the perfect competition.

Here is a bit of background on the problem that we chose:

In 2019, about 36.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide was produced globally. Urban cities accounted for more than 70% of global CO2 emissions. These excess carbon emissions have a global aftermath, including rising sea levels, increase in health issues, and irreversible damage in our ecosystems. Throughout last year, we conducted extensive research on different ways to mitigate this problem. We researched carbon sinks, which are natural or artificial reservoirs that absorb vast amounts of CO2. Oceans are the planet’s main carbon sink, but soil (specifically the microorganisms in the soil) is also an essential carbon sink. However, in urban environments, trees are being cut down and soil is being excavated, liberating trapped CO2. Our community needs a solution to help absorb carbon emissions.

In order to solve this problem, we made a solution called the Carbon Sink Pellets! After researching, we came up with three materials to absorb carbon dioxide with the soil. Soil is a carbon sink, meaning that it absorbs carbon dioxide naturally. We decided to use this to our advantage, and make a pellet that amplifies that absorption. The three materials are, Zeolite (an aluminum sulfate that is used to absorb carbon dioxide), cow manure, and clay. After months of research, we started our first experiments with Zeolite, clay, and cow manure each separately and then together. Overall, after experimenting, we used the RapidTest (pH) to find out how much each separate material is absorbing. Although each separate material absorbed a decent amount of carbon dioxide, after some more experimenting we found out that all together the three materials can absorb much more. The product design of the Carbon Sink Pellets has changed over each experiment, first we were using around palm size balls, and now we are using tiny pellets that have all three materials in them.

As STEM-In-Action Grant recipients we plan to use the grant money to implement our solution in our schools, country gardens, and even spread awareness to the broader community about our solution. We have made a timeline for each step in our process of implementation. So far we both have talked to our separate schools and we are working on the process of implementation in the respective school gardens. We have already gotten permission to do this in each of our schools as well. We want to recruit interested classmates to help us with the implementation of our projects as well. The first step in our STEM-In-Action plan is completed and we can’t wait to continue on this journey for further implementation!