Challenge
NCAA March Madness is a single-elimination basketball tournament played each spring. 68 Division I college basketball teams battle for the national championship. It’s “Madness” because it captures the excitement around sports with the tournament, the upsets that happen between teams, the filling out of brackets, and the teams vying for the top spot! Since the tournament happens mostly in March, it is going to be the theme for this month’s STEM Challenge. Your challenge is to create a “trophy” for the champions of the basketball tournament. Your trophy must hold an actual basketball at the top of the trophy. What shape, size, and design should the trophy be to hold the basketball? How tall should the trophy be? What materials can you use? Your creation does have some criteria and constraints. As mentioned, the basketball has to sit at the top of the trophy. It should support the basketball for 20 seconds without crumpling. The basketball cannot be taped to the supports. The supports cannot be taped to the building surface. It must be at least 12 inches high. You can only use the materials given. Materials
Hints and Tips for Success
0 Comments
Challenge
February is Cupid’s month and who is Cupid without his bow and arrow he uses to help people fall in love? But Cupid is experiencing some trouble with his arrows. They seem to be going too slow to reach his designated targets. He needs your help to make Valentine’s Day a success. This is your challenge to design an arrow protocol that is speedier than Cupid’s current arrows. Since you will be making a protocol arrow by representing an object, think about the materials being used. What types of balloons will make the best arrow? Are different shapes better than others? How can the materials be manipulated for best use? How can you make the arrow look like an arrow and be aerodynamic? Your arrow creation does have some criteria and constraints. You can only use one balloon in your design. The finished product has to resemble an arrow Cupid would use by using the construction paper as design aspects. It has to be placed on the straw line system to be tested. It has to travel about 10' and hit the target to stop the time trial. Finally, the speedier, the better. Materials
Hints and Tips for Success
Challenge
January is a great time to have a snowball fight. Every good snowball fight needs some kind of fort for protection and to build more snowballs under cover. Snowball fights are best suited for outdoors, but what about modeling one inside? This will be part of your challenge, building a fort to withstand attacks from snowballs. Since you will be modeling the activity, representing an idea, object, a system or process, think of the materials being used. What kind of structure makes the best fort? Are different shapes better than others? How can the materials be manipulated for best use? Your snowball fort creation does have some criteria and constraints. The fort is being constructed out of 100 index cards and only 12 inches of tape. The fort has to be at least 9 inches tall and 10 inches long. To test the fort, determine how 3 snowballs (cotton balls or wadded up pieces of paper) can be fairly launched at the fort to test its durability. Materials
Hints and Tips for Success
Challenge
This month's challenge is a little different than previous months'. It is based on the Hour of Code! The challenge is to have every student in your classroom complete at least an Hour of Code in the month of December. The Hour of Code initiative takes place each year during Computer Science Education Week, which is December 9-15. You can experience this at any time of the year, though! It is held annually in recognition of the birthday of computing pioneer Admiral Grace Murray Hopper (December 9, 1906). The Hour of Code started as a one-hour introduction to computer science, designed to demystify "code", to show that anybody can learn the basics, and to broaden participation in the field of computer science. It has since become a worldwide effort to celebrate computer science, starting with 1-hour coding activities but expanding to all sorts of community efforts. Head here, https://hourofcode.com/us/learn, to checkout the free tutorials and experiences for all grade levels. Additional information about completing the challenge and on the initiative can be found at https://hourofcode.com/us. Happy Coding! Challenge
Did you know, STEM Day falls on November 8? There’s no way around it: children are significantly better off with strong science, technology, engineering, art, and mathematics skills. That’s why STEM education programs are so important. It’s undebatable that these subjects push society forward, and these programs help to find fun and engaging ways to teach them to students, which is all worth commemorating. So, on November 8, we celebrate STEM Day! How can you celebrate? By taking part in the STEM challenge on this day or any other day this month. This month's STEM challege is a little different. The challenge is to build and make a model to brainstorm and answer, "What does STEM mean to you?" Students can build a model to represent what they think STEM means or how they see it using various materials. There are no criteria or contstaints to this challenge. It is an open-ended, metaphoric prompt to let students explore and think critically about the solution. Materials
Hints and Tips for Success
Challenge
This is the time of year when we often start noticing more spiders and their webs. We tend to associate spiders and webs with Halloween. Why? Well, many spiders reach adulthood in the late summer and early fall. So, they become more visible to us, and there are more spiders to create even more webs. Spider silk, the strongest fiber in nature, is used to make their webs. It is stronger than steel and thinner than a strand of hair! Webs are used to help spiders catch their prey and to help alert the spider of predators. If you haven’t guessed it by now, this month’s challenge has to deal with spider webs. Your challenge is to create a spider web to capture the most items. What material would work best for capturing the items? What shape, size, and design should the web be to be most effective? Can you emulate an actual spider’s web from nature? Your spider web creation does have some criteria and constraints. Determine specific dimensions for your webs so they turn out to be generally the same size. The web must look like a spider web, meaning with strands and holes. The objects being caught in the web must be the same with identical processes of how the objects reach the webs. Materials
Hints and Tips for Success
Challenge
Arrrrrre you aware that September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day? Get ye mateys aboard for this month’s challenge, which is pirate themed. Treasure maps were popular among the crew to look for their booty. They included symbols, directions, pictures, booby traps, keys, and other forms of communication to help remember where their treasure was hidden. Your challenge this month is to create a treasure map to locate a certain place or object. It focuses on the engineering practice of generating and comparing multiple possible solutions to a problem based on how well each is likely to meet the criteria of the problem. What kind of map will be best? What should be included on a map? How can the communication be clear and directions easy to follow? Your treasure map does have some criteria and constraints. Make sure all groups are creating a treasure map to the same place and starting from the same location. This way groups will be able to compare their solutions. A rubric or system of comparing should be devised to regulate map comparisons. Rubric components could include ease of reading map, ability to find the treasure according to the map, design, or type of directions. Materials
Hints and Tips for Success
Challenge
Summer is nearing an end but there is still time to build a sandcastle! The good news is you don't even need to go to the beach to do so. The beach experiences way too much erosion by wind and rain anyway to keep a sandcastle around for multiple days. Can you think of other ways erosion affects the land or other things? What does all this have to do with this month's challenge? This month, your challenge is to engineer sand so it can withstand the erosion elements of wind and water. You're going to test out different recipes to determine which sand would be best to keep a sandcastle in tact during a windy day or a wet one. What ingredients might we need to do so? How much of each ingredient? How can we test out a recipe before building an entire sandcastle? Your sand recipe does have some criteria and constraints. Only the materials provided can be used in your recipe. The same kind of sand should be used when performing tests against each other. Other sands can be used as long as all groups have access to the same sand. Try to change only one variable at a time so fair tests can be done. Use a Dixie cup as the standard size of a brick to measure the effects of erosion. *This idea and challenge can be further explored in the Advancing STEM Grade 4 Unit, Centuries of Change: Processes That Shape the Earth. Materials
Hints and Tips for Success
Challenge
The days from July 3 to August 11 are known as the Dog Days of Summer, usually the hottest, muggiest of the year. This is the period when Sirius, the Dog Star, rises at the same time as the Sun. The ancient Romans defined this period and believed the weather was warmer because Sirius was also providing heat for the Earth, hence Dog Days of Summer. So, how can this heat help us with this month’s STEM challenge? Heat rises which is going to be a good fact to know when building your solar updraft tower, which harnesses the Sun’s heat energy to do work. Our version to going to use empty cylinders with a pinwheel attached to the top. The goal is to get the pinwheel to rotate from the heat rising through the solar tower. What materials would be best to use for the tower sections? Do certain items warm up faster or more than others? How can the pinwheel be attached so it can spin freely? How high off the ground should your updraft tower be? Your challenge is to create an updraft tower that uses the Sun’s heat energy to spin the pinwheel the most amount of times. Updraft Tower Example. Your updraft tower does have some criteria and constraints. Only the materials provided can be used in your design. The tower needs to be at least 1 foot tall. Every group should build and construct the same type of pinwheel for fair testing during the rotations. *This idea and challenge can be further explored in the Advancing STEM Grade 4 Unit, Full of Potential: The Effects of Energy. Materials
Hints and Tips for Success
Challenge
A fun summer activity for all ages is using sidewalk chalk! Chalk and chalkboards have also taken off in forms of decoration in homes and in businesses. Have you ever wondered how to make chalk? What ingredients do you think make chalk? Which kind of chalk is the best? Do different brands have different recipes? All these questions can be answered with this month's challenge. Your challenge is to follow different recipes to make chalk and determine which chalk is it best. You can also compare the different chalks made to existing chalk brands. Your chalk making does have some criteria and constraints. You should follow the recipes given without altering them. The chalk should all be made the same size and same amounts. For tests of chalks, the same routine and test should be done as accurately and fairly as possible. Materials
Hints and Tips for Success
Challenge
Since it is now officially spring, the flora will start blooming and then before you know it, be ready to disperse their seeds. Flora depends and relies on their seeds to help with expansion and growth into different areas. Some plants have structures that allow their seeds to become airborne and soar long distances. What do you think these seeds look like? How far do you think the seeds can travel? How will you test it out? Enter this month’s challenge. You and your group need to design a wind dispersed seed structure to carry a single seed the farthest distance possible. The seed you will be carrying is a lima bean. Your seed structure does have some criteria and constraints. You can only use a single piece of paper of your choice. The seed must stay attached to the structure. If the seed falls out during flight, the distance will be calculated as zero. You can test your structure during the build process with the fan. For the final test, you will have three trials, measure each distance, and average them together for your final distance. Materials
Hints and Tips for Success
Challenge
Earth Day is celebrated every year on April 22nd. It was first celebrated in 1970. It is a day used to promote and support environmental protection for our Earth. We don't need a special day to celebrate. We can celebrate this day year round! We have to think of our future and generations to come. Taking care of the Earth is best for every organism in the future. What are some things you do to protect our Earth? What are some things others can do to help the Earth? This leads right into the challenge for the month. How can you reuse materials to reduce your impact on the environment? For this challenge, there are not any criteria or constraints! Use your imagination to think of different ways to use something, especially plastic items since they take a very long time to decompose. Search the web. Learn how others or reusing items to make art, clothing, fashion accessories, bags/wallets, jewelry, etc. *This idea and challenge can be further explored in the Advancing STEM Kindergarten Unit, Spot the Differences: Changes to the Environment Materials
Hints and Tips for Success
Challenge
March is National Music in Our Schools so this challenge will follow suit! Sound dampening materials are used in the music industry to produce high quality sound. Without these materials the sounds from outside or inside could mix together. Imagine listening to your favorite song, but there are birds chirping in the background since they were outside the recording studio that day! It probably would ruin the song. There is a need for sound proofing to create excellent recordings. What materials help reduce sounds? How much of the material is need? That’s where the challenge comes in. Your challenge is to construct a prototype room for dampening sound coming from a device. What will be the best materials to use? What already exists in the real world or your school that does this? Your sound proofing room does have some criteria and constraints. Only the materials provided can be used in your design. Each groups’ room should be the same size. Testing the room should be placed over the same device emitting the sound. Or the device inside could be recording and sound coming from outside the room. Materials
Hints and Tips for Success
Challenge
It’s the month of Febrrrrrruary according to the weather. It’s definitely providing some cold temperatures as it starts and will most likely continue. How do you stay warm when going outside in this weather? What makes you stay the warmest? Do you wear different types of clothes during the winter for different temperatures? How come? What types of fabrics are used in winter clothing? After thinking about all these questions, think which hat, glove, scarf, sock, or boot would keep you the warmest. That is your challenge this month, to find out which of these items will help you stay the warmest. Gather a bunch of different types of these in your classroom or at home to help you decide. Your ultimate challenge is to construct a method to fairly test which items will keep you the warmest. Be sure to make predictions, collect data, and share your findings. Your method does have some criteria and constraints. Make sure to use different types of gloves, boots, scarves, and socks, the same type of thermometer, to reset the thermometers to room temperature, to allow the same amount of time when testing each item, etc. Materials
Hints and Tips for Success
Challenge
Happy New Year! It was officially winter on December 21st and that means the weather will continue changing this month to be more winter-ish. Colder temperatures could mean snow and ice and the possibility of water freezing on the roads and sidewalks. How does this happen? What makes the snow/water turn to ice? Better yet, what is the best way to get rid of the ice on the sidewalks or roads to prevent accidents? Snowplows do their best to prevent accidents but what are they spreading on the road? Is there something better? What do you spread on your sidewalk to get rid of the ice? Which dissolvent works the fastest? Your challenge is to figure out which ice melter is the best. Your challenge does have some criteria and constraints. The ice cubes being used for the test should be from the same water source, the same approximate size, and conducted at the same time of an experiment. Make sure to also continually check the experiment and during the same time intervals. Materials
Hints and Tips for Success
|