FRIENDSWOOD, Texas: Most seventh-grade science projects stay on the classroom table. Caden Terence Pohlkamp’s went underwater. 

The Texas student built a small remote-operated vehicle, or ROV, to collect water samples from the bottom of local retention ponds and investigate what makes some of them healthier environments for aquatic life. 

Pohlkamp, then a seventh grader at Brookside Intermediate School in Friendswood, developed the robot for a 2025 science project titled “Is Greener Better”? Does Littoral Vegetation Enhance Habitat Suitability of Local Retention Ponds?” 

According to the Society for Science, Pohlkamp used the ROV to gather samples from 12 ponds before testing factors including pH, dissolved oxygen, turbidity, phosphate, and temperature. 

His results suggested that ponds with 15% to 30% non-grass vegetation around their edges provided better conditions for aquatic life. He also found higher dissolved-oxygen levels in ponds with fountains, while ponds without fountains showed measurements associated with greater algae presence. 

The findings came from a relatively small student study and should not be treated as proof that fountains or shoreline vegetation directly caused the differences. The robot itself solved a straightforward problem. Instead of relying only on samples collected from the edge of a pond, Pohlkamp could send the ROV underwater and retrieve water from deeper locations. 

The available project description identifies the machine as a remote-operated vehicle. It does not indicate that the robot operated autonomously or that its water-quality measurements were taken using sensors onboard the vehicle. 

Pohlkamp shared his findings with local officials, according to the Society for Science. 

His project later earned first place in the Technology Award category at the 2025 Thermo Fisher Scientific Junior Innovators Challenge.