Gering High school engineering students featured on Martha Stewart website as ‘changemakers’

GERING – A familiar group showed up on the May 23 online edition of the Martha Stewart magazine – it was the Gering High School team that recently finished in the top 10 in the Samsung Solve for Tomorrow Contest.

One of the magazine’s sections is called “Change the Day,” featuring companies and groups, called changemakers, that work toward making a positive impact on people’s homes, health and even the environment.

The article told the story of how Justin Reinmuth’s high school engineering classes envisioned and built a washing machine filter that removes microplastics from the water.

Microplastics, tiny pieces of plastic that shed from synthetic fabrics like rayon and polyester, can end up in the water system. The particles absorb motor oil, industrial chemicals, and about anything else in the water.

“A couple of the kids and I were interviewed by people from the magazine a month ago,” Reinmuth said. “I didn’t know if it was going to be published because we might not have made the cut of all the schools.”

Then on May 23, he got an email with the link to the feature. Reinmuth sent link to his students and to the school administration. Although it’s still early, a few compliments over the publicity have come back.

This is the second time Gering has made it to the finals of the Samsung competition. They were one of the top prize winners in 2017 for a project on using drone technology for precision application of chemicals on cropland.

With the top 10 finish in 2018, Gering became the first school to make to the finals two years running.

Next year, Samsung’s communications department will visit Gering for an “all-star” article for their website.

Samsung also has an appliance division, so the company is looking at whether the microplastic filter could be adapted for use in its washing machines.

For finishing among the top 10 schools in the competition, Gering received $50,000 in technology. But Samsung had another gift in store for Gering. Every student in Reinmuth’s two engineering classes received a Galaxy Note 10.1 with an S-Pen, the latest tablet from Samsung.

The engineering classes are part of the Gering school district’s STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) career path among their various career academies.

Next year, Reinmuth said they plan to offer an advanced robotics class in addition to the basic intro to engineering and AutoCad computer aided design.

Gering’s STEM classes can provide a head start on future careers. Two of the students that made the presentation at the 2018 competition, Adam Moench and Ken Witcofski, are both attending South Dakota School of Mines this fall to study engineering.

Although he isn’t saying much, Reinmuth is planning an even more challenging project for the next school year. Some of the needed parts had to be special ordered from Germany and involves some of the latest technology the group learned about during the competition in New York.

“It’s been fun and I hope the kids enjoy it,” Reinmuth said. “The classes keep growing and we have a lot of things like engineering and robotics that we didn’t have two years ago.”