STEM&M Sessions for Girls
- Chemistry – Gluep Anyone?
This hands-on workshop will give students the opportunity to learn about a common class of chemical compounds called polymers. Students will work in groups of two in a chemistry lab and synthesize polymers from different starting materials. We will also use commercially manufactured polymers and perform tests to compare the properties of these materials.
- Physics – Building three digit binary number display
Description: Students will learn about circuits and how LED’s work. After a brief introduction, they will build a circuit using LED’s and use the Arduino Microprocessor to control the LED. Once familiar with controlling the LED, they will build a circuit to display numbers 0-7 in binary.
- Biology: Strawberry DNA
What contains the biological instructions that make each species unique? DNA, of course!
It was Swiss biochemist Frederich Miescher who first observed DNA. Have you ever seen DNA? During this workshop, you will experiment with a strawberry extract, isolate, and observe it’s DNA. You don’t have to be a biochemist or geneticist. It’s fun & easy and only takes some simple household materials.
- Scratch – Create animations and video games using MIT’s “SCRATCH” software – Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu) is a programming environment that was designed specifically to allow people to quickly begin creating their own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art. It is a project of the MIT Media Lab’s “Lifelong Kindergarten Group,” and is widely used to enable students to explore their digital creativity.
- Internet of Things – This session will walk participants through what Internet of Things technology (IoT) is, and discuss lots of practical applications for IoT, from the sensors in refrigerators to auto-fill needed supplies to the sensors in trash cans to alert trash workers when to efficiently pick up the trash. Cloudbits, a type of LittleBits circuit, will be used to get participants started on their own IoT project!
- SCIENCE- Out of this World!– SCIENCE- Out of This World! NASA is looking for new inventions that can help collect data from space. This activity will require you to plan, create, and design something that NASA could benefit from that is “space worthy” (Space worthy basically means that the design and it’s purpose is enough to convince NASA to send it to space).
- Nanoscience/Nanoengineering – Natural Nanomaterials: Students will realize the correlation between nanostructures and properties of natural nanomaterials they use on a daily basis.
- Robotics – “LEGO® Robotics” – work with robotic sets that allow your student to bring their toys to life!
- Network Science and The Effects of Music on the Brain: From Beethoven to EminemHarnessing a student’s natural interest in music this session will focus on new network science techniques for studying the effects of music on the brain. Participating students receive an introduction to complex systems and training in network science tools and techniques by working hands-on with large data sets,in this case, brain imaging data sets. Participants will have the opportunity to use command line computer skills and view structural brain images. Participants during this session will also learn the basic introductory steps and tools for how to process and view functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) data for network analysis.