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Challenge
With recent launches of rockets and a few more happening in July, it's time to blastoff this month with the STEM Challenge! Check out the Events Calendar at Kennedy Space Center for upcoming launches to watch them live or previous launches to prepare for builidng your own rocket to launch. Your challenge is to create and design a rocket and launch pad for blastoff. Adjust the rocket fuel and rocket design to see which provides the best blastoff. What size rocket will work best? What if the rocket had fins or other designs? Does the ratio of fuel ingredients matter? What about the ratio of fuel to the rocket size? What should the rocket launch pad be? The goal is create the best rocket you can and to experiment with all those questions! Design some sort of launch pad first. The goal of the launch pad is to hold the bottle upside down in an upright position. Next, decide on a plastic bottle to use as your rocket and design your rocket. Finally, experiment with the ratio of your rocket fuel or baking soda and vinegar. Your creation does have some criteria and constraints. Make sure safety is noted at all times. After the rocket is fueled, place it in the launch pad, and back away. Only launch rockets in a wide open spaces and from the designed launch pad. For launching, fill the bottle with the chosen vinegar ratio, pour the baking soda on a 4"x4" piece of paper towel, wrap up the baking soda with the paper towel, stuff it carefully into the spout of the bottle, cork the bottle, and turn it upside down into the launcher and move quickly out of the way. Prepare for blastoff! Materials
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By: Clay Nolan, CA BOCES Learning Resources
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Challenge Are you stuck at home and looking for something fun, easy, and science to do? I’m a big fan of Rube Goldberg machines and think this might be something to tie fun, easy, and science all together! What is a Rube Goldberg machine though? Let’s start with Rube Goldberg, himself. He was an American Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist, sculptor, author, engineer, and inventor, and his work is a classic example of the melding of art and science. Goldberg began his career as an engineer, and later became a cartoonist who drew elaborate illustrations of contraptions made up of pulleys, cups, birds, balloons, and watering cans that were designed to solve a simple task such as opening a window or setting an alarm clock. Interestingly, Goldberg only drew the pictures, and never built any of his inventions. However, these pictures have since served as inspiration for makers and builders who want the challenge of making wild inventions to solve everyday problems. So, that is your challenge for today. Can you build a Rube Goldberg machine to solve a simple problem? Maybe you want to turn on a fan, pour a glass of water, knock over an item, catch something, turn on a light, pop a balloon, ring a bell etc.! The possibilities are endless. For this challenge, there is no criteria or constraints. Use your creativity, ideas, thinking, and materials to create your own contraption! Materials
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By: Clay Nolan, CA BOCES Learning Resources
Challenge
January is a great time to have a snowball fight. Every good snowball fight needs some kind of fort for protection and to build more snowballs under cover. Snowball fights are best suited for outdoors, but what about modeling one inside? This will be part of your challenge, building a fort to withstand attacks from snowballs. Since you will be modeling the activity, representing an idea, object, a system or process, think of the materials being used. What kind of structure makes the best fort? Are different shapes better than others? How can the materials be manipulated for best use? Your snowball fort creation does have some criteria and constraints. The fort is being constructed out of 100 index cards and only 12 inches of tape. The fort has to be at least 9 inches tall and 10 inches long. To test the fort, determine how 3 snowballs (cotton balls or wadded up pieces of paper) can be fairly launched at the fort to test its durability. Materials
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By: Clay Nolan, CA BOCES Learning Resources Challenge
Did you know, STEM Day falls on November 8? There’s no way around it: children are significantly better off with strong science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics skills. That’s why STEM education programs are so important. It’s undebatable that these subjects push society forward, and these programs help to find fun and engaging ways to teach them to students, which is all worth commemorating. So, on November 8, we celebrated STEM Day! How can you celebrate? By taking part in the STEM challenge on this day or any other day this month. This month's STEM challege is a little different. The challenge is to build and make a model to brainstorm and answer, "What does STEM mean to you?" Students can build a model to represent what they think STEM means or how they see it using various materials. There are no criteria or contstaints to this challenge. It is an open-ended, metaphoric prompt to let students explore and think critically about the solution. Materials
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By: Clay Nolan, CA BOCES Learning Resources Challenge
The days from July 3 to August 11 are known as the Dog Days of Summer, usually the hottest, muggiest of the year. This is the period when Sirius, the Dog Star, rises at the same time as the Sun. The ancient Romans defined this period and believed the weather was warmer because Sirius was also providing heat for the Earth, hence Dog Days of Summer. So, how can this heat help us with this month’s STEM challenge? Heat rises which is going to be a good fact to know when building your solar updraft tower, which harnesses the Sun’s heat energy to do work. Our version to going to use empty cylinders with a pinwheel attached to the top. The goal is to get the pinwheel to rotate from the heat rising through the solar tower. What materials would be best to use for the tower sections? Do certain items warm up faster or more than others? How can the pinwheel be attached so it can spin freely? How high off the ground should your updraft tower be? Your challenge is to create an updraft tower that uses the Sun’s heat energy to spin the pinwheel the most amount of times. Updraft Tower Example. Your updraft tower does have some criteria and constraints. Only the materials provided can be used in your design. The tower needs to be at least 1 foot tall. Every group should build and construct the same type of pinwheel for fair testing during the rotations. *This idea and challenge can be further explored in the Advancing STEM Grade 4 Unit, Full of Potential: The Effects of Energy. Materials
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By: Clay Nolan, CA BOCES Learning Resources Check out this month's Advancing STEM Challenge!
Chalk It Up Advancing STEM Challenges are designed to bring engineering and design to your classroom in a simple, easy-to-implement, challenge-based way. Modify our Advancing STEM Challenges for your classroom. A new challenge will be post Check out this month's Advancing STEM Challenge!
Have Seeds Will Travel Advancing STEM Challenges are designed to bring engineering and design to your classroom in a simple, easy-to-implement, challenge-based way. Modify our Advancing STEM Challenges for your classroom. A new challenge will be post As the winter snows melt and sunshine begins to extend and warm up each day, you know Spring is in the air. At Gail N. Chapman elementary school in Randolph, 2nd grade students ‘Catapulted into Spring’ with a STEM activity that consisted of two parts. Each student was given a bag of various materials that could be used for each part. In part one, students could use pieces of wood, rubber bands, tape, and a spoon to create a catapult that would fly a plastic egg into the air. In part two, students needed to create a nest type structure to catch the egg. The structure could be made out of toothpicks, lollipop sticks, jelly beans, gumdrops, marshmallows, and grass clippings. The first part of the STEM challenge focused on leverage and force, as students needed to be sure their catapults could take an egg at least 6” into the air. They experimented with various lengths for their catapult, and how much force would be needed to get the proper height and distance they were looking for. The second part of their STEM challenge required their catapulted eggs to be caught in a nest type structure and they were not to touch the ground. Students discussed various creative ways to accomplish this and were left to explore their own engineering and design. Conversations about what design to use, and what materials worked best were taking place all over the classroom. Once time had elapsed for their construction and building, it was time for each student to attempt to catapult their egg into their created nest. No matter how many students were able to launch their eggs into the nest, all students succeeded in having fun and experimenting with leverage and engineering.
By: Rob Griffith, CA BOCES Professional Development
Check out this month's Advancing STEM Challenge!
Did you hear that? Advancing STEM Challenges are designed to bring engineering and design to your classroom in a simple, easy-to-implement, challenge-based way. Modify our Advancing STEM Challenges for your classroom. A new challenge will be posted monthly. Check out this month's Advancing STEM Challenge!
Now You See Me...Now You Don't Advancing STEM Challenges are designed to bring engineering and design to your classroom in a simple, easy-to-implement, challenge-based way. Modify our Advancing STEM Challenges for your classroom. A new challenge will be posted monthly. Check out this month's AdvancingSTEM Challenge!
AdvancingSTEM Challenges are designed to bring engineering and design to your classroom in a simple, easy-to-implement, challenge-based way. Modify our Advancing STEM Challenges for your classroom. A new challenge is posted monthly. Post a photo of your students in action in our comment section or post a comment on how you modified the Challenge to work in your classroom. Check out this month's Advancing STEM Challenge!
Sliding Down a Slippery Slope Advancing STEM Challenges are designed to bring engineering and design to your classroom in a simple, easy-to-implement, challenge-based way. Modify our Advancing STEM Challenges for your classroom. A new challenge will be posted monthly. Check out this month's Advancing STEM Challenge!
Plethora of Pollinators Advancing STEM Challenges are designed to bring engineering and design to your classroom in a simple, easy-to-implement, challenge-based way. Modify our Advancing STEM Challenges for your classroom. A new challenge will be posted monthly. Check out this month's Advancing STEM Challenge! Keeping Afloat - Oh Buoy!
Advancing STEM Challenges are designed to bring engineering and design to your classroom in a simple, easy-to-implement, challenge-based way. Modify our Advancing STEM Challenges for your classroom. A new challenge will be posted monthly. Advancing STEM Challenges are designed to bring engineering and design to your classroom in a simple, easy-to-implement, challenge-based way. Modify our Advancing STEM Challenges for your classroom.
Check out this month's STEM Challenge. Advancing STEM Challenges are designed to bring engineering and design to your classroom in a simple, easy-to-implement, challenge-based way. Modify our Advancing STEM Challenges for your classroom.
Challenge Did you know snowflakes generally are hexagonal structures because of the chemical bonding that occurs within the water as it freezes? or that each snowflake is unique? Do you know what kind of snowflake falls the fastest or slowest through the air? Your job is to find out this last question! The task is to design a prototype snowflake using paper and scissors. Once you've built your snowflake prototype, you can test it out by dropping it from different heights and using a stopwatch to time which design falls the fastest or slowest. Your snowflake design does have some criteria and constraints. Every snowflake created has to be from the same origami template (see step-by-step instructions with pictures here: http://www.origamiway.com/how-to-make-paper-snowflakes.shtml). There has to be a 1cm border on the top and bottom that cannot be cut. At least three areas have to be cut out from the template. The snowflake should be dropped from the same height every time, held open with two hands, and held horizontal (flat) to the floor for fair trials. You and your group should try to design a snowflake following these guidelines that falls the fastest or slowest. Materials
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The November STEM Challenge: Turkey Cooker.
Advancing STEM Challenges are designed to bring engineering and design to your classroom in a simple, easy-to-implement, challenge-based way. Modify our Advancing STEM Challenges for your classroom. A new challenge will be posted monthly. Post a photo of your students in action in our comment section or post a comment on how you modified the Challenge to work in your classroom. |
