This year during the summer program at MVU, we completed a STEM Camp The main focus on the camp was Design using technology as well as learning some science and math principles. On the first day we did some science lessons on the laws of motion so they would understand some of the projects we would be doing later. We then started of with a building project and learning how to follow a procedure. Each student got to pick an Este’s rocket and had to follow the instructions to build the rocket. They then decorated the rocket and we launched them the following day. Then the students used the knowledge they learned the first day to use a design/drawing program to design their own rocket. Once they had finished designing the rocket, they were able to gather various rocket parts we had and build their design. They mostly worked on this during the 2nd day of camp and decorated the rockets. Testing day was Wednesday. We got to go out and launch their designs on the 3rd day of camp. Quite interesting to see if their design worked: (Here’s a link to a video that didn’t work quite so well) (and here is one that worked better – he had to solve the problem of how to get 3 engines in his design to launch at once) (finally one then worked quite well)

We spend some time the 3rd day after they launched their rockets working on some gaming programming. The students got to work on a program that uses a game to teach them how to write software called gamestar mechanic.

The 4 day of camp, we focused on mechanics talked about calculating mechanical advantage and the students built a device using Knex that used simple machines. Here’s a Picture of a couple of their machines – Mechanical design.

Our final day was a day of flight – the kids got to learn about the physics of flight and how airports and airplanes work by visiting the Franklin county airport. They were given a ride on a plane through the Young Eagles program at the airport and allowed to tour the airport and learn about all that goes on there. Here is a video of kids on plane.

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