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!).
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!