With all 143 students back on campus today we were all pretty busy…having lots of fun! Today was full of engineering fun for both groups. Red and blue groups had a blast with the Dr. Walcott and other College of Engineering staff. They got to tour the different facilities and laboraties the College of Engineering has. One of their favorites was going into the sound proof room…now if only we could get them to stay quiet for 30 s
econds to really experience it 🙂 They also got to design an aluminum boat and test it’s floating capacity. In robotics, they got started on the Green City Challenge today and had a lot of great successes. There were lots of smiles and high-fives as the students completed the various tasks associated with the challenges. Tomorrow they are in for another treat with Dr. Brett Criswell and some nanotechnology action! 
Since the astronomy viewing was not available all week because of night time cloud cover, Dr. Tim Knauer – Director of the MacAdams Observatory – came over after his class today and set up his special telescope that allowed the students to view the sun directly. They were very excited to see the fiery ball and even a ring was visible! We only wish the other two groups could’ve seen it too, but he is teaching a class until 12:30 each day. 
The yellow and green groups took to some design engineering activities with Mr. Doug Klein from Project Lead the Way. Mr. Klein had them building away during their session. The students were very excited to be “real engineers” for the day and got to design and build dams and levees. In robotics they started the newly-released Space Challenge. Since this is a new, it brought about it’s own set of challenges, but the kids did a great job of working through it all together, being patient, and working on programming. One group got up to 53 blocks for one program! Wow! Tomorrow they will get to end with a STEM Camp favorite – Dr. Bruce Walcott.
In their words…
The wonderful world of engineering! (Dr. Bruce Walcott) – red and blue Groups
- I learned that when being an engineer you have to consider the volume of what your creating like what we did with the pennies.
- That concrete boats float
- Yes because I enjoy both math and science which are what you use in engineering.
- The more the volume of a boat, the better it can float with weight.
- I thought the activities made it fun.
- Building the egg mobile
- That we got to actually enginer stuff.
- I learned how to build a dam.
- I am interested in a career in engineering because I like to create things and solve problems.
- Yes; engineering is all around us and is a big part in life.
- Levees (effective ones, at least) can be made with tape, cardboard, dirt, and popsicle sticks.
- It was interactive, fun, and included one of my possible careers.
- Yes because I love Stem and it is my passion.
Conversation Starters…
Blue and Red Groups
- What is a sound proof room? What makes it sound proof?
- How many pennies were you able to put into your boat? What makes your boat float?
- How did you find the area or dimensions of what your boat needed to be?
- What was your favorite part of engineering today?
- What challenge did you complete in the Green City Challenge?
- How do you and your partner(s) work together to program and complete the challenges?
Yellow and Green Groups
- What does it mean to be an engineer?
- What do you need to build a successful levee or dam?
- Talk to me about how you created your levee or dam today. What did you take into consideration as you built it?
- What is an egg mobile?
Picture of the Day… Be sure to scroll through the pictures as I noticed that I didn’t hit accept to publish the pictures from yesterday. I’m missing half of the pictures from today so I will get them uploaded in the morning…my apologies…we’re trying hard to keep up with these great kids! 