November 2016 – Engineers Volunteering in STEM Education

Event title: St. Elmo Brady STEM Academy Symposium

Location: Newmark Civil Engineering Builing, UIUC

Date: November 12, 2016

ENVISION hosted a station at the St. Elmo Brady STEM Academy Symposium for 4th and 5th graders from elementary schools in Urbana-Champaign, as well as a few students from the Chicago area. The students learned about polymers by making bouncy balls out of glue, Borax, and water (and food coloring!).

2016-11-13-11-49-17-2 2016-11-13-12-55-42-2

The students (and their parents) learned about how polymers are made out of small molecules called monomers, and how these polymers can be linked together with special chemicals called crosslinkers. Students were able to figure out which of the ingredients in their bouncy balls was the polymer (the glue) and the crosslinker (Borax) and what would happen if you added in a lot of Borax or a lot of glue!

2016-11-13-11-36-12-2 2016-11-13-11-26-55-2

Event title: Kenwood Field Trip

Location: Mechanical Engineering Laboratory and Digital Computer Laboratory

Date: November 4th, 2016

ENVISION partnered with POETS to host 75 4^th and 5^th graders from Kenwood Elementary. The kids played with LEGO Mindstorm kits in the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory, where they programmed robots to move in a specific shape.

20161104_095711

The students then moved over to DCL to build water roller coasters with aluminum foil coated with a superhydrophobic material. The goal was to transport water from start to finish without any leaking. Their roller coaster ride had to have at least 1 turn and needed a unique name. Some of the names from today’s event were “Wolf’s Tail” and “Dragon’s Eye”.

file_005

One of the teachers overheard four different students say “Best fieldtrip ever!”

file_008 file_002