WPI Teaching Practicum

The practicum, or student teaching, was done at Shepherd Hill Regional High School under the supervision of Mrs. Debra Richard. Shepherd Hill is located in Dudley Massachusetts and contains students from both Charlton and Dudley. Mrs. Richard has been employed at Shepherd Hill for many years and is a well-known mathematics teacher. Over the course of seventy-five hours, observation of Mrs. Richard's teaching style and ability was made.Once the seventy-five hours of observation was completed one hundred and fifty hours of student teaching took place

Determining the Parameters of Force Curves on P. aeruginosa

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is very harmful to immunocompromised individuals. An atomic force microscope was used to measure the surface forces of this bacteria's exopolymers. These forces were characterized with a force model, which is a function of brush length, probe radius, temperature, separation distance and an indefinite density variable, s. This last parameter could represent root spacing or mesh spacing of the exopolymers. This study aims to clarify s by obtaining force values as a function temperature. Data show the brush length to be on the scale of several hundred nanometers while s is on the scale of tens of angstroms and is varying with temperature suggesting that s represents the mesh spacing. This knowledge will aid in developing treatment for bacterial infections