St Rose of Lima School science teacher Mardé Dimon explained on Thursday, January 28, she recently offered her eighth grade students an engineering challenge.

The students were tasked to work in groups of two or three to follow an engineering process to design representations of different organ systems in the human body, such as the respiratory or circulatory systems.

"And they had to design a model, but it had to have a working part that worked in the same way that it would work in that organ system," said Mrs Dimon.

The eighth graders used plastic aprons as the base for the projects, but before they could build their projects they first followed "the steps of the engineering design process," as detailed by a class handout.

The students identified the problem, identified the criteria and constraints, brainstormed possible solutions, selected a design, and finally built the model.

"I did not give them any procedure steps… and I did not give them any materials," said Mrs Dimon, describing how she instructed the students to look around the science room to find materials. "Everywhere you look there is stuff: Go find what you need to make it. So the creativity that goes into these is really astonishing."

One group of students used pieces from a poncho to create a liver. Other students used parts from rocket kits used in class at the school.

Students Sabrina Capodicci and Natalene Sim, who worked in two different groups, explained their efforts.

Natalene said her group worked on a model of the circulatory system, and it included a heart that inflates "like a real heart does. You make it beat," she said. Syringes filled with liquid also mimicked how blood flows using a balloon pump.

Sabrina said her group work on a model of the muscular system and used rubber tubing to represent muscles in an arm. When the apron is worn, the rubber tubes stretch and constrict over the student's moving arm, demonstrating how muscles respond to the same movement.

Mrs Dimon said students also had to complete engineering journals as a literary piece of the project, detailing all of the efforts and steps made throughout the engineering endeavors.

Other grade levels at the school also had engineering challenges recently, according to Mrs Dimon. Sixth grade students, for instance, were challenged to create working weather measurement devices. One group, as demonstrated by Mrs Dimon, created a working anemometer to measure wind speed.