SAN ANTONIO – Students at Nimitz Middle School showed off a major science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, project Tuesday.
The greenhouse is inspired by the film "The Martian," where Matt Damon's character has to figure out how to grow food on Mars. Â
Construction took Roselyn Schnabel and some of her classmates three months.
"They were calculating the sines and cosines for the angles in the back in tech apps, which was really cool," Schnabel said.
STEM art teacher Willie Sanchez won Community First Health Plan's Fall Ahead contest last fall, which awarded $2,500 to help his students create the greenhouse.
Sanchez said now that it's up, it's time to focus on interior design.
"What is the best way to set everything up, the tables, and are we going be able to properly irrigate it where you're going to have water out of the greenhouse?" Sanchez asked. He called the greenhouse project-based learning.
The goal is to have a big enough harvest for students, with enough left over for the San Antonio Food Bank.
"A lot of us don't get to do this type of stuff every day, whereas we're doing this almost every day in our school, which was interesting for us," Schnabel said.
It's hoped 50 to 60 students will get to work in the greenhouse. Sanchez said they'll be growing veggies before we know it, while reaching for the stars about ways to expand.
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