GMS uses math, design to aid entrepreneur

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APPLYING MATH — Ganderia students learn from entrepreneur Mark Kappler about his fuel polishing machines.

OXFORD — Ganderia Middle School students used their Math class to help Mark Kappeler, a businessman from Boston, MA, solve a problem using their coordinate plane studies and interest in graphic design program.

Kappeler owns POWERSURE, Inc., a mobile company that cleans fuel for boats, trucks and auxiliary generators, so that these motors can be counted on to start quickly when needed. His system of filtering enables the fuel to be reused instead of disposed of, saving both replacement cost and disposal consequences for his clients.

The Ganderia Middle School students had met Kappeler during their last field trip to Boston, when he described how his boyhood interest in gocarts and explosions had enabled him to use his tinkering abilities in inventing a specialized machine to solve the needs of his clients. The students were interested to hear how he had used their classroom skills of spreadsheets and cost analysis in becoming a successful entrepreneur.

Early Wednesday morning Head Teacher Susan Bryant received a request from Kappeler for assistance transforming a graphic that he had received in reverse from a potential new client. When Bryant described the situation to the students they said “wow, BIG client!” and got right to work to help him. They had been studying the dynamics of supply chains and the weight that small companies attach to landing big clients, so understood Kappeler’s situation.

The students, after experimenting with a few programs, managed to open the engineering specs for the complicated piece of transportation technology, and used their understanding of coordinate plane geometry to flip it on the x axis and return it to Kappeler, in a more readable format, before 9:30 a.m. Then they went back to applying the same principles, in colored pencils and graph paper, labeling coordinates to manually reflect and rotate images of birds, horses and bunnies, creating possible floor tile designs in the process.

Ganderia welcomes problems from other businesses to try to solve. Please contact Susan Bryant, Ganderia Middle School Head Teacher, at susangbryant@yahoo.com or 857-231-1768.