SAGUACHE — Several Mountain Valley High School students and two Colorado University Boulder students partnered to investigate and discover the importance of the Earth’s air quality.

According to Mountain Valley School, “Each Student used CU Boulder’s manmade equipment (The Y-Pod) to conduct their experiments. The U-Pod can measure many different compounds in the air (particulate matter, volatile organic compounds, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, and more). Our bright ninth-grade students did their own investigations surrounding an air quality question to design an experiment.”

The Mountain Valley ninth-grade students posited different questions and then presented their findings. The scientific questions ranged throughout the air quality spectrum including comparing emissions from different vehicles, cigarette toxicity, bathroom cleaner toxicity, and comparing gasoline to diesel engines.

Some of the findings enabled the students to perform practical experiments to test their hypotheses.