PocketLab Experiments: Face Mask Effectiveness Test

Mr. Vandegrift is using a PocketLab Voyager (But you can also use Weather or Air) to show his students the efficacy of face masks. Through data collection and visualization, the students are engaged and curious and want to keep investigating. Check out his YouTube video below. 

Getting students excited about science and relating it to the real world around them is key to buy in from them. Myles Vandegrift gets that. We consider him one of our PocketLab STEM Superstars.

Myles Vandegrift is a passionate middle school science teacher who has been engaging students with his enthusiasm and genuine curiosity about the natural world for more than 28 years. He is deeply driven to connect with STEM students and make science meaningful and relevant to them. He cherishes the opportunity to inspire young people to reach their full potential and believes every STEM student can learn and achieve at high levels with enough time, support, and the right learning environment. Outside of the classroom, Myles connects with students through his work coaching skateboarding and the science olympiad team, and has taken students on expeditions to Catalina Island, Beijing China, Tambopata Research Center in the Amazonian Rainforest of Southeastern Peru, the lost Incan city of Machu Picchu, and Gabon Africa (Operation Canopy distance learning project). Myles also inspires future science teachers as an adjunct professor at Point Loma Nazarene University, which is where he earned his undergraduate degree in biology and MA in Teaching and Learning.

In this video he is using the humidity function of a PocketLab to measure how much moisture (the droplets we have heard so much about) is escaping past a face mask. On the chart logging the data you can see the rise and fall of this level. Replicating this same citizen science experiment with masks of varying materials will reveal which masks are most effective.

What percent humidity do you think your face mask lets through?

Check out this video and explore the lesson we created that you can do with your students.

We created this lesson in PocketLab Notebook

If you want to do this with your students, we created an entire no-prep lesson that you can use today. You can access it here. The lesson can be done using PocketLab Weather, PocketLab Air, or PocketLab Voyager.

If you have not already signed up for your free Notebook account, get registered and you can add up to 35 students to assign this lab to right away.

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