Air Cleaners as a model system to teach curve-fitting and exponential decay.

Air quality is an increasing concern, particularly in urban areas where airborne particulate matter (PM) can exceed safe levels. This project involves a team of undergraduate students constructing air cleaners using commercially available Corsi-Rosenthal Box (CR Box) kits, providing low-cost, effective air filtration to a local high school classroom delivered along with age-appropriate lessons on the relevant science behind the filters.  Our main goals were for the high school students to develop a deeper understanding of the importance of scientific data literacy, to learn how air cleaning improves environmental quality and infection control, and to expand their experimental data analysis skills.  

We guided students in a physics class at a local high school through the construction of the air cleaners and delivered a multi-part lesson on air quality, data collection, and curve fitting. Covered topics included the health impacts of fine particulates and airborne disease transmission, methods for collecting time series data on particulate concentration, and how to use spreadsheet tools to curve fit the data and calculate the Clean Air Delivery Rate (CADR). Filters with sufficient total CADR for the number of students in the class were donated after our visit, providing air cleaning capacity in accordance with ASHRAE Standard 241 for infection risk mitigation.