STEM Class projects
This is where all of the updates for the STEM Class Projects will be found. This page will include explanations for every single one of the projects that STEM does. Stay tuned for updates.
STEM starts vex kits and robotics
By Michael Ferree
STEM has started the robotics unit and started building mechanisms and simple machines. In this activity we had to build simple gear assemblies and observe how they are used in every day life. A mechanism is a device that transmits movements so that the output movement is different. Two STEM students named Walter Woods and Robert Malizia built one of the hardest mechanisms in the packet that we received they built the Universal Joint. Other students built the Chain Drive and the Cam and Follower. In the future we will be building robots also programming them to do missions with line followers, touch sensors, potentiometer and a motor controller. All of the robots will be build are from the VEX kits. Greek NewspapersBy Walter Woods
STEM kids were hard at work last week, making a newspaper for the Greek Gods Of Olympus (The Council Of The Twelve). The STEM kids had a lot to do, and have made some interesting newspapers. The STEM class worked on this project when given class time and more when they had free time. The STEM kids were able to pick their own partners, so they knew how the person worked, and whether they were good partners or not. The project was very fun and we learned a lot about Greek mythology. The class had a good time coming up with articles to write for the newspaper, and a lot of them were comical and clever. Since that project is done, the kids in STEM are moving on and getting on with the rest of the unit of Greece, the superpower of the historical world. I can personally say that all of the STEM kids are now “Greek Geeks". Want to see one of the papers? Click on the files below!
Life as we knew it
By Thomas Cappelli
"I know it's crazy. But I really need to know if Lisa had the baby. It feels like it's okay for me to die if she did. How much longer can I last anyway? A week? Two? I'm willing to lose a few days for peace of mind. You understand that, don't you?" Sixteen year old Miranda Evans is your average teenage girl, with problems like her two best friends always fighting and her dad and his new wife about to have a baby. But this life, the life she used to know quickly fades away. When an asteroid collides with the moon and knocks it out of orbit, the Earth faces massive environmental disasters. Tsunamis wipe out whole cities and islands off the map, and volcanic ash spreads through the air, blocking off any sunlight, the skies only to be seen in shades of dark gray. You forget that electricity even exists for most of the book. Millions are dead within the first few chapters, and many more struggle to survive. Miranda writes down her encounters and story of survival during the most catastrophic time in world history for ten months as her and her family start cutting down on meals to maintain their dwindling food supply for as long as they can, and being forced to live in their sunroom, with a woodstove being their only source of heat. Temperatures drop to freezing by November in their rural western Pennsylvania town. Throughout the whole book, Miranda starts to have occurring nightmares where she can't tell whether she is still alive or not. She even says "Megan's right about my being a sinner. But she's wrong about hell. You don't have to wait until you're dead to get there.” It seems that throughout the book, as Miranda and her mother and two brothers grow closer together, she matures greatly. She stays strong instead of just giving up all hope like most people in the story. She cares for her family when they are struck with a spreading flu virus, and she's the only one that can take care of them with their scarce supplies. She, her mother, and her older brother Matt stop eating for a while, in hope that if they all die, her younger brother Jonny can still have enough food to survive. Life As We Knew It is a very intense book that will have you reading non-stop until the end. It had well-written journal entries from the point of view of Miranda. From the first two chapters, you will be captivated by the writing of Susan Beth Pfeffer as she tells a story of how one girl manages to push through the worst, and survive along with some of her remaining loved ones. Oh, and Neil Truslow had something to say about the book as well. Life as we Knew it is a book about an apocalyptic world where the moon was struck by a meteor in a shining ray of fire that brought it closer to Earth than before. The characters are Miranda and her family as they survive modern times with no electricity, hot food, running water, or even School! You can follow them in this terrible adventure. The book is absolutely unrealistic and totally overactive. During the book people die due to the moon pulling water closer to cities on the coast and drowning them out. Since people were afraid of the moon being hit closer to the Earth and causing more trouble they didn't go to work or even attempt to live their normal lives. The sun was still shining and the Earth still rich with agricultural ability but instead of helping return things to their normal way people looted stores, houses, and businesses. Then after the worst of the raids are over people complain about how there is no more normality which was their fault. In the end I hated this book because of human over reaction. Books of the apocalyptic genre are normally meant to be exciting and filled with fiction but by making humans so stupid it actually somewhat offended me. Then it actually fills in things that couldn't happen if the moon got to close to the Earth, such as volcanoes erupting and causing the sun to be blocked out. Finally, in the book there was actually a way they could have prevented the entire thing! They had an entire week to calculate if the meteor could have done anything to the moon or just have blown it to bits. But they chose to do nothing! This book shows how stupid people really are in a dumb and offensive way. The Boy Who Harnessed the WindWe recently read a book in class The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, and here's what some people had to say about it.
Book Review by Nick Riley The book we read was The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind. It was very educational and it makes you see what it is like to live somewhere a lot different. The main character was William Kamkwamba and he lived in Malawi. He overcomes so many different things in an act to bring good to his town. William's parents also are very good people, they always want the best for their children. The story is written well and has a good plot. The story is great, but the author can use more detail and focus on more interesting parts. William also overcomes starvation and builds a windmill to power his house and town. This was one of my favorite books I have read, and I recommend this book greatly. Book Review by Sam Hoffman The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind is a book with no plot at all. The book starts out with William starving and then he gets the idea for the windmill. He gets the idea for the windmill after he is forced out of school because he can't pay his fees. He makes the windmill after finding a book on electricity at the library. I did not like the book because it did not have a good plot. He didn’t talk about the windmill until more than 60 percent of the book was over. I do not recommend the book. Children's booksBy Thomas Cappelli
We worked on making books, written and illustrated by us STEM students. These books had to appeal to children grades K-3. Some of the stuff we had to include in our books were information on the different types of engineering careers we chose to write about, varying between groups. These careers included astronautical engineers, chemical engineers, nuclear engineers, and many more. Another thing we had to have in our books, since they were meant to be for little kids, we had to have an interactive element in it. These included pop-ups, water flowing through the books, and pull tabs. If you think this sounds hard to make, we're STEM. We can do anything! STEM Kids Using PreziBy Ethan Milford
Instead of a boring old PowerPoint, STEM kids have been using something called Prezi for their presentations. In case you don't know, Prezi is a website made specifically for kids in school to present their projects. "Prezi is a great website. It has a lot of features that are really cool. It's just awesome" said Robert Malizia in an exclusive interview. They made presentations on modern artifacts, such at a telephone, a compass, a baseball, and many more! There are things we learned in these presentations that others did not know about at first. Things including: The first soccer cleats were made with actual spikes! Alexander Graham Bell's wife and mother were both deaf! There's many more facts you can find out using a Prezi! Just go to www.prezi.com to start! |
doodle 4 google
By Josh Egolf
Google needs a new front page, so they started a Doodle 4 Google drawing contest. In order to help them out, the STEM class entered Google's contest. This contest is online and I will leave the website address at the bottom. When we started this project, it was a nice, cool day in January of 2013. The reason the STEM Class did this was to do this for fun and to see if anyone of them would win the prize. Doodle 4 Google is a fun drawing competition from kindergarten to 12th grade. Kids can choose from three templates such as the blank form, outlined form, or the water marked. Plus, if your drawing wins, it will not only be Google’s front page for a while, but you will also win a $30,000 college scholarship (and your school will get a $50,000 technology grant too)! Last year’s winner was Dylan Hoffman and he had an awesome picture of a pirate with a chest, a Parrot and a ship in the background. That was a great idea, but if you want to join, you better hurry: it ends in about 32 days. So if you really want to do the Doodle 4 Google, here’s the website: http://www.google.com/doodle4google/. But the reason I think about this why Google is doing this is for the kids to have fun. Also, the theme is “My Best Day Ever”, so think about what you want to do to your drawing. Have fun and good luck is all I have to say to all those kids who join or joined. Now you think of why Google has this. What will your drawing look like? Public Service Announcements
By Bryce Hall
The STEM Class is making public service announcements. We started to make the announcements on Monday 14th 2013. We are making these announcements to convince people to use some other resource that is not a fossil fuel, and we are recording the announcements with our laptops camera recorders. We are making Public survives announcements to tell everyone that they should use some other sort of fuel that does not hurt our environment. We are doing this in our classroom and 3 other rooms close by to spread out to not make it not to loud in our videos. We use our laptop's web-cam to record our video's and then some of us are using flip-cams and this all was started on Monday the 14th and is going until Tuesday 22nd of January. With this we look to the future and it is wanted to be using a good bit of renewable resources like Solar, Wind, Hydroelectric, and even Nuclear Energy to power most of the Earth's appliances like fridges, cars, and light bulbs. Product Life Cycles
By Josh Egolf
The STEM Class just finished a project, and that project is called “Product Life Cycles”. This project took about 4-5 days. The whole reason we did this project was to learn what our everyday things we use are made of and what happens when we are done using them ( do they get recycled or trashed). Some of the things that we did was the toilet paper, pen, tissues and much more. The life cycle of the toilet paper was almost the same as making regular paper but a little different and you can recycle the pulp in it to make more toilet paper or just throw it way. The water bottle life cycle is it is made from oil and the oil is made into plastic which then is molded into a water bottle. Plus the water bottle can be recycle (should be recycled) or trashed. If you want to learn more about some other things like the quarter, pen, duck tape, Lego, Big Mac box, tissue, red solo cup, Coke or Webkinz, just go to the STEM Room. The Cycle that the STEM Class used was Design. Then Acquire Materials to Material Processing which is making the main materials for the main product (oil = plastic). Next is Manufacturing to Packaging (how many go into a pack). Third is Distribution (to sell the product of give it away) to use. Final one is Reuse or recycle which everyone should do is recycle it if it can be recyclable. Do You think the STEM Class got most of the things you use everyday? windmills!
By Daniel Frederick
The class of STEM has finished there book “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” and have decided to build windmills to see what the can power. The first windmill will pump water into a test tube. And depending on the power, we will measure how much water was put into the test tube. The second test will be with weights and see how much weight it can pick up spinning on its axis. The third and final test is to see how much energy we can put into it to see if it can power a Christmas tree light bulb. So far we are still working on getting the base and getting all the materials onto the windmills to get it to work. Hope you can come and see it sometime! STEM Ancient Playgrounds done!By Ethan Milford
Recently, the STEM children have been pushed to their educated limits with a big project that involves every basic school subject. In the project, the children have to pick an ancient civilization and create a story involving designing a playground on AutoCAD, which was very hard. Then we had to prototype the playground into a scale model with various materials. Then you have to put everything on a giant poster to present to the class. It has been hard for some, but easy for others. Some have been struggling with the project, but all of the groups have some creativity in their blood. It has been very fun for the students, but at times stressful. The STEM teachers have definitely been on edge for the past week! It has been a little chaotic in the STEM room. But through it all, the STEM kids have managed to make some pretty acceptable work for it. And as a result, the STEM children are going to have a Pizza Party for all of their hard work! PARTY TIME :D AutoCAD Playground AssemblyBy Bryce Hall
In STEM we have just finished our playground assembly project. We had to go through our steps by making the platforms, poles, Tunnel slide, spiral slide, a climbing wall and monkey bars. One of the hardest parts was the monkey bar because of the mating and flushing them to each other. Putting the poles in the monkey bars was a easy part but just inserting them into the monkey bar holes. Designing a spiral slide was one of the hardest parts too just because getting the right dimensioning and coiling it took a bit of time and, for some maybe even having to go back 2-3 times and fixing it. The climbing wall was easy for some and hard for some between making it and putting in the handles. The tunnel slide was hard to constrain to the platform of the playground and just getting the shape of the tunnel slide, and putting the hole in the slide to slide through took a little bit of time too. Pizza Box ChallengeBy Sierra Cox Hello, classmates! A little while back we did a project, and it was a fun, good time. We made chairs, and those chairs were made out of pizza boxes! The pizza boxes were from pizza places like Pizza Hut, Little Caesars, Pizza Joe's, Wedgewood, Cocca's Pizza, Papa John's, Westgate Pizza, etc. We all built pizza box chairs and had people of our class sit on them. Those people were Bob Malizia, Noah Chase, and Mr. Freudenberg! After everybody sat on them, we had two chairs left that didn't collapse. The chairs left standing were built by Kyle Krpicak and Neil Truslow, and one built by Alli Dilts. Kyle and Neil's was a square one, and Alli's was a triangle shaped chair. They were both great. It was fun working on the chairs with partners, but poor Alli's partner was sick the whole time. However, she managed to build the best chair in the class, along with Kyle and Neil's. Everyone did a good job, and they worked so hard! Marshmallow ChallengeBy Hannah Rosser
This fun project surely took the students by surprise, because they had no idea they were trying the challenge until moments before! The Marshmallow Challenge is a challenge that doesn't involve self-harm for once! It needs the student or person trying it to take twenty pieces of spaghetti noodles, a yard of tape, a yard of string, and a marshmallow to build a self-standing structure with it. And the marshmallow needs to stand on top of the structure. Students did just this, and still didn't beat the 6th grade class that did the challenge. The tallest height record was a tie between two groups that managed 20". Most structures at least stood up, but two failed. After doing the challenge, the STEM class watched a video on an interesting study which showed that newly graduated business students do fairly WORSE than average kindergarteners! One thing for sure is that if kindergarteners can average a height of 28" and we can only get 20", us STEM kids need to step up our game! |