THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 5, 1996 TAG: 9604030184
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By PHYLLIS SPEIDELL, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
MARVIN WOODIS HOPED to see what he called ``really exciting stuff'' at Norfolk Naval Shipyard. More than ships and subs, however, Marvin, a 14-year-old aspiring architect, wanted to see electronic analysis instruments and some of the other hi-tech equipment typical of a sophisticated metals evaluation laboratory.
Marvin was not disappointed when he and his classmates from Waters Middle School recently visited the shipyard on an interactive field trip. On a three-hour tour of the shipyard's lab, a major analytical test facility and the largest industrial lab in the Navy, the youngsters saw demonstrations of an optical emissions spectrometer and a scanning electron microscope as well as tensile testing equipment with a pull strength of up to 400,000 pounds.
``It might have been above some of the younger students' heads, but the eighth graders were right in their element,'' Cathy Roberts said.
In addition to teaching at Waters Middle, Roberts is a sponsor of the school's CHROME club - Cooperating Hampton Roads Organizations for Minorities in Engineering. An areawide consortium, CHROME is open to all students from kindergarten through high school - but it targets interested non-Asian minority and female students and encourages their interest in math and science careers.
The field trip, a CHROME club project, was a first with shipyard engineers creating special preliminary laboratory experiments for the students to perform at school before their trip to the shipyard labs. After using very basic lab procedures to analyze samples of aluminum, stainless steel, mild steel and brass, the students compared their results with those achieved with the shipyards' more sophisticated equipment and procedures.
``It is one thing to sit in a classroom and listen to what your teachers are saying, but it is not easy to apply that to what is happening in the real world,'' laboratory director Bill Roberts said. ``We showed them how we take the basic education they get in school and apply it here.''
Roberts - who is not related to Cathy Roberts - stressed that safety is the most important factor in all the lab testing.
``Airplanes need to go up and come down safely, and subs need to go down and come up safely,'' he said.
Several shipyard engineers guided their young guests from lab to lab, demonstrating various ways raw materials, ship parts and new components can be tested for flaws.
The students were awed by the scanning electronic microscope, which can enlarge a pin point to the size of a basketball.
``This is the Cadillac of microscopes, engineer Bruce Fosnocht said. ``It gives metallurgists the tool they never had before to help determine the cause of metal failures.''
Equally intriguing were the large hydraulic presses, specially calibrated to test metals for durability under compression and tension. Eyes widened as the giant presses stretched metal samples to the breaking point, and the crack of snapping metal made everyone jump.
J. Thomas Benn, the yard's quality control director and chairman of the Portsmouth School Board, pushed to forge an educational connection between the Naval Shipyard and Portsmouth schools last fall when he held a meeting with city science teachers to explain the types of field trip experience, mentorship and professional development the yard might provide to both students and teachers.
Cathy Roberts saw how such a field trip could enhance her CHROME members' application of their studies to real life and could broaden their awareness of careers available in a laboratory setting.
``It gets the kids thinking that they can be something other than a doctor, lawyer or basketball player,'' she said, ``and what steps to take toward a career in engineering and technology.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by MARK MITCHELL
Barbara Walker, left, a chemist at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in
Portsmouth, explains how metals are tested to students from Waters
Middle School.
by CNB