Tenth Grade STEM Summit

Avery Logue, Reporter

On November 6, tenth graders attended the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Summit (STEM), which Junior Achievement (JA) had created.

According to JA, “STEM is a day activity that is trying to provide connections to careers with science, engineering, math, or technology components.”

The overall goal of the summit is to introduce students to various job options within STEM, which they may consider for future careers.

The students started off the day with an assembly in the auditorium where volunteers gave information on why STEM Summit exists and what they were going to do throughout the day.

The day consisted of nine different half hour stations which were: math competition, biology, coding,  automotives, engineering, relay runs, robotics, chemistry and science.

The math competition station consisted of five different mini-games. Two of the five games consisted of solving equations through a deck of cards and the other through Jenga.     

The other three games involved solving mathematical puzzles through coffee straws, a wooden puzzle, and flashcards.

In the biology station, volunteers from Johnsons Control taught the students how to visualize the stress of molecules through a balloon.

For this experiment, students received a balloon to blow up, and they had to guess where they thought the molecules were less stressed and tested their theories by sticking a skewer through the balloon without popping it.

Two out the nine stations were much more relaxed than the others. These were coding and automotives. During the coding station the students learned the basics of coding and started to create their own game online.

Through the automotives station, a volunteer from Apple Automotives taught the students how to create different types of circuits that could turn on lights and fans. After mastering the circuits, the students got another demonstration of circuits and learned how to set up a headlight and a horn of a car.

This year JA decided to have only one panel involved with the day, which was about engineering. For this panel volunteers came in and talked about their jobs at the local Peachbottom Power Plant and jobs that are available in the engineering field.

After going through the calmer stations, students picked up the pace with a relay race that members of the military created. With this race, it got the students to learn how to work together while also trying to work at a fast pace.

There were two different science stations, which were focused on chemistry and pharmaceutical science. With the chemistry station, students mixed different chemicals to create a styrofoam hand that they were able to take home. Students also learned how to make “elephant toothpaste” using hydrogen peroxide and dish soap.

For the pharmaceutical science station, students received experimental saliva and their volunteer taught them how to discover different sicknesses through several testing methods.

The final station for the day was robotics. For this station, the group split up into four different teams and received two robots each. In three minutes the teams had to work together in an attempt to get their robots to stack cones on top of each other

The robotics station was one of the most popular station with the students. According to tenth grader Kaitlin Carl, “The robotics station was probably my favorite since it was more of a hands-on activity.”

At the end of the day, all of tenth grade went back to the auditorium for the “finale”. A scientist taught everyone how nitrogen can change its state of matter in seconds.

He showed this is by taking fifty gallons of nitrogen in a container and pouring five gallons of water into it. This resulted in a big explosion of gas and water.

 

For most of the students, the ending was the best part of their day. Carl stated, “The reaction was really unexpected and cool.” It even got some of the kids in the front row wet.