STEM Class Links

 

I was very excited to have had the opportunity to teach STEM recently!  Ms. Chapman and I had a great group of students.  This page contains highlights from a few of our activities.   

We were studying a wide variety of topics as STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Math.  My hope is that we covered all topics in a fun and interesting way.  Please note that our curriculum for this class was a dynamic class and was always under construction, but we followed the basic order of topics online and continued to make changes as needed.   If you are new to STEM, you may find the attached brochure helpful.  Let's step up to STEM!

This year's class will be taught by Ms. Saulters and I know the students are in for a treat!

STEM Brochure

UNDER CONSTRUCTION!       

 

STEM Lessons - Table of Contents

Unit 1 Intro to STEM - Safety, Ethics, Notebooking  & Teamwork                                                                 

Unit 2 Physics - Buoyancy, Catapults and Newton's Laws

Unit 3 Engineering - Gears, Hydraulics and Torque, Oh My!

Unit 4 Programming and Coding - OG Style - Original Gaming

Unit 5 Robotics - VEX Connects

Unit 6 STEMathematics - Area, Volume and Built to Scale                          

Unit 7 Architecture - California Building

Unit 8 Space - Eyes on NASA

Unit 9 Energy - Going Green

Unit 10 Machines:  Simple and Otherwise

Here's what we've been up to!

 

Balloon Cars

          

 

 

 

 

Build Your Own Newton's Cradle

  

                                                                                     

 

Archimedes Squeeze - How many grams will your boat hold?

It FLOATS!   We added the weights and then everything they could think to try to sink the S.S. Indestructible.  It held more than 8 golf balls at 45g each!  After that, they began adding everything they could think of to see how much it would hold.  It held a ridiculous amount proving their theory that a greater surface area would strengthen their ability to stay afloat. 

 

               

 

Catapults R Us

Our goal was to shoot lima beans as far as your catapult would go.  The students all had unique designs and surprised us with shots that went over 7 meters in the parking lot.  When weather became too wet, we shot marshmallows in the cafeteria and had some extremely accurate designs.  We even had one student create and build a working trebuchet  Way to move those marshmallows!

 

                                        

 

 

Paper Coasters

Right now we're designing and building roller coasters out of card stock paper.  The goal is to create a design that will take a marble at LEAST 20 seconds to make it through the ride.  Everyone's pitching in with ideas and hard work.  Can't wait to see the finished products!

                    

 

   

 

Images by © Phillip Martin 2005 – 2017.  For more of his wonderful work, see http://www.phillipmartin.com  heart