Interested in STEM

STEM2U: Northern Kentucky University, Greater Cincinnati Region (nku.edu)

Science Anchor Charts

S.T.E.M. at an Early Age, 
Reallllll Early

Here are some of ways you can encourage S.T.E.M. thinking skills from an early age.

1. Give children toys that have “manipulative elements” like balls and rattles. Ask children to control elements of these toys, like building higher towers or making the rattle softer or louder.

2. Have children explain how simple tools in your house work, like a can opener or a door hinge.

3. Allow infants to practice “repetitive play,” like dropping a spoon over and over, which helps the child learn about concepts like gravity long before they learn what gravity is.

4. Give children time to practice four kinds of play: pretend play that involves a child using their imagination; exploratory play where children create experiments or take things apart; guided play where adults play and interact with children, and free play without an adult involved.

5. Allow exploratory play (within reason and with safety in mind), even if that means a toddler may get dirty.

6. Ask “why,” “what” and “how” questions as much as possible to push children to explain their thinking.

7. Use complex and accurate vocabulary words, even with babies. Introduce them to words like “stable” when building a tower or “fragile” when touching objects.

8. Teach children that they are constantly learning by encouraging them to say,

“I can’t do this yet” instead of “I can’t do this.”                  http://hechingerreport.org

Five Websites to Teach Coding

1. Code.org

Code.org is a website that is heavily advertised for their “Hour of Code” program.  Some schools have a goal to have students complete one hour of coding per year.  How will they ever learn with only one hour?! Code.org came up with a great feature called Code Studio. This allows teachers to add their students in a class and track their progress as they complete coding levels.  It is a great assessment tool.

2. Scratch.MIT.edu

This site was founded by MIT and provides essential coding skills to all children for 21^st century learning.  This site provides over 40 languages and is used in homes, schools, community centers, and libraries.  Using Scratch helps students create and share stories with each other and teachers. Students of all ages can use Scratch and it also allows for an interactive experience in the classroom.

3. Code Monkey

Code Monkey is a programming site allowing students to use real programming language.  This site is accompanied with lesson plans to help teachers without any computer programming experience.  The full curriculum is included and tracks student progress and achievements. The theme of the site is a cute monkey trying to gain his bananas back from a gorilla.  This game-based experience makes kids think they aren’t even coding at all!

4. Botlogic.us

Botlogic is a great puzzle game that is suitable for children of all ages. This computational puzzle teaches logic to students while introducing them to basic programming skills.  A small robot must make his way through the maze without running out of battery charge.  Students get creative by figuring out the least number of commands our robot friend must take to complete the maze.

5. Tynker

Tynker provides coding games for children ages 7 and up. These fun-filled games begin with visual block based coding and eventually move on to Java and Python.  Along with Tynker, comes curriculum, standards, and training for educators (which most of us may need). Tynker provides STEM lessons, robotic lessons, as well as Minecraft for children to explore.

Newton's Three Laws of Motion

Force

Force is the push or pull that one object exerts on another. If you push a book across the table, the power that you use to push that book is force. If you pull a shade down on a window, the power that you use is force. Force can affect an object in one of three ways. Force can start the object moving or stop the object from moving. Force can cause the object to move in a different direction. Force can change the speed of the object's movement.

Newton's Three Laws of Motion

All moving objects on Earth are governed by Sir Isaac Newton's three laws of motion. These laws are as follows:

1st Law: Objects at rest stay at rest and objects in motion stay in motion unless acted on by a force.

2nd Law: Acceleration of an object depends on its mass and the size and direction of the force acting on it.

3rd Law: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction force.

Earth's Gravity

Gravity is a force that is explained only in terms of its effects rather than its actual cause. For some reason, objects tend to draw toward one another in direct proportion to their size, and they tend to loose affraction in proportion to the square of the dis­tance that separates them.

The greater the two masses involved actually are, the more gravity is exerted. This explains why your gravitational affraction to the earth is greater than your gravitation­al affraction to the wall closest to where you are sitting. You are drawn toward the center of the earth, causing a friction that far overcomes your gravitational affraction for the wall. Thus, you sit in a chair and do not go sliding into the nearest wall.

When a force is exerted on you that resists gravity, that force causes you to have weight. The floor, for instance, exists between you and the center of earth's gravity. If you place a scale between you and the floor, the push you have against the scale is measured as your weight. However, if the floor were to vanish, you would begin to fall freely with respect to gravity, and the scale would read zero. This condition, the condi­tion in which gravity acts freely on an object, is called weightlessness. Weightlessness is the condition in which astronauts exist as their space shuffle continually falls toward the earth (gravity is acting freely).

Science Fair Scientific Method

The Birth of the Scientific Method

Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), an Italian astronomer and physicist, believed in discovering facts by first forming a theory (or hypothesis) and then testing it in an experiment. This approach, which we call the scientific method, was a very radical idea in his time. People were more inclined to accept ideas that were in line with their religious beliefs or that seemed logical. But many scientific discoveries do not always appear to make sense. For instance, many of Galileo's contemporaries did not believe that other planets had satellites (like our moon) because they could not see them with their own eyes. Galileo was willing to explore these questions that others had dismissed. He also believed in careful observation and measurement and devel­oped the telescope into a powerful tool for exploring the sky. With this tool he discovered four of Jupiter's satellites. Galileo's desire to test his theories through experiment and learn through obser­vation and measurement moved science forward.

The Scientific Method

The scientific method is the backbone of a science fair project. The scientific method has four parts:

Observation

You notice something in the world that you want to know more about, so you ask a question. The purpose of your science fair project is to answer this question.

Hypothesis

You predict why, when, where, or how whatever you observed happened, based on information you already have. Sometimes this takes the form of an "if ... then" statement. A hypothesis is often called an "educated guess" because you base your prediction on facts you already know.

Testing

Test your hypothesis with a procedure. You can do either an experiment, where everything except the particular thing being tested is carefully controlled, or fieldwork, where you study your subject in the natural world. Careful observations and measurements are recorded in both testing procedures.

Conclusion

You state whether or not your hypothesis was correct based on the results of your testing. If your hypothesis is proven wrong, try to explain why. Make any fur­ther predictions your results could point to, and describe any changes to your pro­cedure you think would give more accurate results or be helpful to further research. Also include any questions you may have thought of during your testing.

Procedure

Procedure is the name given to the steps you take to test your hypothesis.

The purpose of science is to discover things about the world, with accuracy, truth, and objectivity. Scientists:

·        test ideas.

·        weigh evidence carefully.

·        come to conclusions cautiously.

·        make conclusions based on facts.

An important part of the scientist's process of discovery is the procedure. A procedure is a list of steps. The steps you plan to take to test your hypothesis must be clearly written out so that someone else could repeat what you have done. Your procedure:

·        gives step-by-step directions on what to do.

·        lists all the materials and equipment you use.

·        provides any instructions you need to build or use equipment.

Scientists test their hypotheses either through experiment or fieldwork.

Experiment

Experimental observations are made in a controlled environment that you create. How do you create a controlled environment? You isolate what it is you are investigating in the real world and scale it down so that it is smaller and more sim­plified.

In an experiment, a scientist tries to look at how just one thing affects a sub­ject. The tricky part is creating an environment in which only that one thing changes. That is why you often see scientists using test tubes, petri dishes, and other small, enclosed settings for their experiment. It is easier to control what occurs in such environments.

Fieldwork

In fieldwork, a scientist goes into an uncontrolled environment and records his or her observations. What is complicated about fieldwork is that while you are recording your observations, you must make sure that you yourself are not interfer­ing with your subject simply by being there. For instance, you cannot count birds in a tree if you scare any away while you try to count them.

Field Study Finds New Life Forms

Your field study may occur in your own backyard or even at the local nature preserve, but can you imagine exploring the deep rifts in the ocean's floor in a submarine?

In 1977, scientists aboard the research submarine Alvin, from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, discovered a new ecosystem, or community of organisms, thriving near volcanic vents at the bottom of the freezing waters of the Pacific Ocean's Galapagos Rift.

The high heat and hydrogen sulfide from the cracks in the volcanoes provide the energy for special bacteria, a staple of the unique food chain there. Other members of the ecosystem are huge tube worms that measure up to 25 feet long. Because they are so different than anything else known by scientists, they are classified in a phylum, Vestimentifera, by themselves. The scientists named some of the new worms alvinellid worms, after their submarine research vessel.

This strange volcanic ecosystem, based on converting sulphurous chemicals into food, sug­gests to some scientists the possibility that there may be similar strange life-forms on other planets with volcanic activity.

Daylight Saving Time

Geeeeee, did you know that American farmers did not lobby for daylight saving to have more time to work in the fields??? Daylight Saving Time was first implemented on March 31, 1918, as a wartime measure. 

 

Illustrating 

the 

Strength of a Cylinder

Need:
Notebook paper
Tape
Book

Procedure:
1. Roll the paper on its short side into a cylinder. Tape it.
2. Stand the cylinder upright.
3. Place a book on top of the cylinder.

The shape of a structure affects its strength. A piece of paper is not a strong material. However, when it is rolled into a cylinder it becomes stronger and the weight of the book is spread throughout the structure.

Try it!!!