Teachers (Feb 10th)
17; about 50 pre registered. Some may have left because the location
was hard to find. 1500 students will be exposed to the material presented at the session to the teachers.
Teachers (May 19th)
64; about 95 pre registered. Some may have left because the location
was hard to find. 8500 students will be exposed to the material presented at the session to the teachers.
Agenda
08:30 Welcome
09:00 Breakout sessions with experiments (4 sessions)
12:00 Lunch
1:00 Breakout sessions with experiments (4 sessions)
4:00 Closing remarks and discussion
4:30 Adjourned
Experiments
"Reach Like a Robot" - Engineering
is a creative field with many good solutions to the same problem. In this hands-on project, teams of students build
a mechanical arm using ordinary household items. After each team has built their mechanical arm, you will test your
vision and talk about what makes a good mechanical arm.
"Build a Better Candy Bag" - Work in teams to design,
build, and test a model candy bag. After each team has built their candy bag, we’ll test them to see whose holds
the most heavy candy, whose holds the most light candy, and whose is the most attractive. We’ll talk about some
design issues such as appearance, cost, and functionality.
"Rotational Equilibrium: A Question of Balance" -
Students build and test a mobile to explore the principals of rotational equilibrium. Students make predictions about
the force on each of the three levels of a mobile, work in teams to construct and test their predictions, analyze results
and compare team results.
"What’s In a Birthday? An Introduction to Statistics and
Data Analysis" - Basic statistical and data analysis concepts are covered using the birthdays of the class
members as raw data. Various ways of presentation statistical data are compared for clarity and readability.
"Veggie Power - We know fruits and veggies give us energy but
what about an alarm clock?" The goal of this experiment is to make batteries from fruits and vegetables
using metal electrodes. The power produced by the vegetables and fruits will be tested on low voltages devices, like
an alarm clock or calculator. Which vegetable or fruit makes the best battery?
"Inert Inertia" - This experiment tests the age
old law "a body at rest remains at rest, but a body in motion remains in motion." Each group will get a toy car with a washer
on top. The car will run down a ramp at a predetermined height and hit a wall. This process is repeated 3 more
times using different ramp heights. The groups will define inertia, discuss the relationship between the height of the
ramp and the distance the washer travels, and the relationship between inertia and the speed of the car at the bottom of the
ramp.
“Build A Paper Boat: An introduction to volume and buoyancy”
- Participants will break into teams and use a piece of card stock that is 6"X 12" and make a boat. The boat will
be placed in a bowl of water and the students will put marbles in it on at a time. The objective is to see which boat
can carry the most marbles without sinking.
Can You Drop the Egg and Not Break It? A lesson in force,
energy absorption, and stability of geometric structures.” - Participants must design a package to
contain an egg. The objective is to successfully drop a packaged egg from a predetermined height without breaking the
egg. Before the drop, each package is weighed. Each package is also dropped from the same height.
