Engineering, Design, and Development (EDD).  With Robertson as their teacher and with only 24 students in the class, students are able to create incredible projects, ranging from pacemakers to special water bottles.  Even though this is a seventh period class and is only held on Sundays in room 501, these engineering students are able to finish an astounding amount of research in a relatively small amount of time.

“In the EDD class, we come up with ideas and work on this project the entire year,” said senior Ryland Dreibelbis.  Students brainstorm ideas within their areas of interest and attempt to find problems within these areas.  The students then try to apply their engineering skills to create an invention to solve their problem.

Following this process, Dreibelbis tried to find a project relating to his running and his cross country interests.  “My project is basically creating a pacing apparatus for track and field athletes,” said Dreibelbis.  If his project is successful, the device will allow for pace to be more visualized for the athlete, a lot easier than using a stopwatch.

Like Dreibelbis, seniors Michael Konrad and Scott MacDonald have also been working on a special project themselves, a water bottle that utilizes the current of a stream or river to power a turbine. “The turbine powers a UV lightbulb which kills bacteria and viruses.  There is a filter that screens out heavy metals and other particles,” said Konrad.  Konrad and MacDonald are working on making this device cheap and portable so that it can be used by backpackers while camping or hiking near rivers or streams with unsafe drinking water.  The device would also be beneficial to those in third world countries who cannot afford “‘point of entry’ large scale systems,” said Konrad.    These “point of entry” systems would cost much more because of the equipment needed to make them, whereas the system that Konrad and MacDonald are trying to make would (in theory) cost much less.

Dreibelbis, Konrad, and MacDonald are all planning on getting patents for their projects, but first, they are developing a prototype.  They then want to work on marketing their inventions and possibly pitching them to interested producers.

On the other hand, Noah Pacifici and Daniel Feldman decided to work on a project dealing with their musical interests.  “We are making a light-up teaching tool for percussionists,” said Pacifici.   The device will be attached to different drums in a set and the drums will light up in the order that they need to be hit.
The EDD class is used to meet one of the Palos Verdes Institute of Technology (PVIT) curriculum requirements.  The PVIT program is made up of two parts: a program consisting of academic study which is a part of the school’s teaching program, and the PVIT Club, which is a program of extracurricular, project-based activities.  The majority of the students in the class are seniors because EDD is often seen as one of the last requirements for the PVIT students to take before graduating.  This class allows these students to apply the skills that they have learned in their physics classes to the real world.  Many of the students in the Engineering, Design, and Development class are also doubling their EDD projects with their Capstone projects.

In some respects, the EDD class works like the Capstone project.  Mainly seniors are in the class and mentors and industry partners work with the students to help guide them with their projects.  The EDD students also have to present their projects to a panel of judges.

PVIT is planning on continuing the Engineering, Design, and Development class in the future, and they are looking forward to all the new inventions that they will surely create, from pacing devices to special water bottles.