Category: POETS

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.

  

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”.

 

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

  

Event Title: Math & Summer Camp at Urbana Middle School (UMS), in partnership with POETS

Location: UMS

Date: June 14th, 2016

Members of ENVISION visited UMS to share a few more STEM activities with the students. The 6th & 7th graders made solar ovens out of pizza boxes and roasted marshmallows and hot dogs. The 8th graders used a polyhedra geometry kit to learn about Euler’s formula, surface area, and volume. The 8th graders then applied these concepts by making origami.

See the attached pictures and click the links below to see handouts from each activity:

Solar Oven

Polyhedron Kit

 

Solar Ovens:

Polyhedra Geometry & Origami: 

 

Event Title: Math & Summer Camp at Urbana Middle School (UMS), in partnership with POETS

Location: University of Illinois

Date: June 7th, 2016

The summer 2016 partnership with POETS kicked off with a great morning on the Engineering Quad at the University of Illinois. Students from UMS came to campus to learn about solar cars. We also reviewed the distance = rate * time formula, the equation for the circumference of a circle, and how the circumference can be used to calculate the distance traveled.

The students first built the solar cars indoors and took some measurements to prepare for speed measurements outdoors.

We then took the solar cars outdoors and predicted how long the cars would take to move a certain distance. Thankfully the sun was out to fuel the solar panels!

Thank you to POETS and UMS for providing the solar car kits we used for the activity!

 

Click here to see the handouts we made for this solar car activity.