The Mercury (Pottstown, PA)

Turnpike toll hikes are wrong for Pennsylvan­ia

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The interest tab on the state’s dozen-year shell game is coming due. It’s time to end the game and pay our bills honestly.

POTTSTOWN >> A Pottstown High School senior was recently selected to attend a national forum that shows students about the fields of engineerin­g and science.

Pottstown High School senior Zachary Beekley was nominated by teacher Andy Bachman to attend the Envision National Youth Leadership Forum for Engineerin­g.

This 8-day program was held at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. It provided hands-on experience with math and science skills that can be applied to the real world of engineerin­g.

The forum took place from July 7 to July 14 and included about 200 teenagers. The program included lessons on design process and the different applicatio­ns of the engineerin­g field. Students spent about 10 hours in a classroom each day learning about the steps in the engineerin­g design process and learning about their capstone project. The goal of their project was to design a water system for a small community in a third-world country, according to Beekley.

“My team was assigned Banlung, which is also sometimes called Krong Ban Lung, in Cambodia. We designed a system to pump water from a nearby volcanic crater lake, Yeak Laom Lake, into a water tower, which used gravity to distribute the water throughout the community of about 17,000 people,” explained Beekley in his publicatio­n, The Beekley Report.

“Yeak Laom Lake was chosen because it is the largest and cleanest source of water near the village. The team’s water system also included a sewage system to pump the used water from the community back into the lake after it was cleaned. The pumps are all powered by an array of solar panels which provide more than enough energy for each pump,” wrote Beekley.

Additional­ly, the team was tasked with determinin­g the total cost of the system, which, according to Beekley, was about $400,000.

Students also worked with basic electronic­s wiring and basic coding to control an IR remote controlled helicopter.

“Throughout the trip, I learned more about the engineerin­g design process, which fields of engineerin­g I enjoy and might consider for a career, what college life may be like, and what I need to be a good applicant for a college I wish to attend. I will have a great story to tell at the start of school when a teacher asks me what I did during the summer,” wrote Beekley.

 ?? SUBMITTED PHOTO ?? Pottstown High School senior Zachary Beekley attended the Envision National Youth Leadership Forum for Engineerin­g. He was tasked to work in a group for various engineerin­g projects.
SUBMITTED PHOTO Pottstown High School senior Zachary Beekley attended the Envision National Youth Leadership Forum for Engineerin­g. He was tasked to work in a group for various engineerin­g projects.
 ?? SUBMITTED PHOTO ?? Around 200 teenagers took part in the Envision National Youth Leadership Forum for Engineerin­g held at the Georgia Institute of Technology this summer.
SUBMITTED PHOTO Around 200 teenagers took part in the Envision National Youth Leadership Forum for Engineerin­g held at the Georgia Institute of Technology this summer.
 ?? SUBMITTED PHOTO ?? Students at the Envision National Youth Leadership Forum for Engineerin­g got hands on experience with lots of different equipment that is used in the engineerin­g field.
SUBMITTED PHOTO Students at the Envision National Youth Leadership Forum for Engineerin­g got hands on experience with lots of different equipment that is used in the engineerin­g field.
 ?? SUBMITTED PHOTO ?? In addition to engineerin­g projects, students at the forum also were given a “Behind the Seas” tour at the Georgia Aquarium, to show the processes that allow the aquarium to function.
SUBMITTED PHOTO In addition to engineerin­g projects, students at the forum also were given a “Behind the Seas” tour at the Georgia Aquarium, to show the processes that allow the aquarium to function.

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