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Homesteaders STEM Project
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Welcome to the web presence for the Homesteaders STEM project, led by Connor and Curtis. Our regular meetings are on second Saturdays at 1 pm at the Homesteaders 4-H Ranch in Santa Clara. Our meeting schedule will be posted on the Homesteaders calendar with "STEM" included in the event titles.

Meeting notes

May 2019

February 2019

December 2018

March 2018

November 2017

October 2017

April 2017

March 2017

February 2017

December 2016

October 2016

September 2016

July 2016

June 2016

May 2016

April 2016

March 2016

February 2016

January 2016

December 2015

November 14th, 2015

October 17th, 2015

September 27th, 2015

Want a flier? Here you go.

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Meeting notes

June 2020

Today we talked about the art of MC Escher and how he used Möbius loops. (Discussed at that same link) we learned about the most common Möbius loop, which is the recycling symbol, and how donuts are like coffee mugs, because of their topological properties.

May 2020

We learned about fractals and made one out of paper. More activities:

https://educationonline.ku.edu/articles/teaching-kids-patterns-in-nature

https://cosmosmagazine.com/mathematics/fractals-in-nature

https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=139097

April 2020

We learned how fast things grow when they can multiply. Here are a couple of things you can do on your own that are related to today's activities. Watch this video about what COVID-19 is; since we focused entirely on non-disease examples of exponential growth in our activities, this has more background information on the pandemic itself. Play around with this interactive graph of cases and see how the curves compare to each other. The hypothetical "cases double every day" line matches the rice, steps, and lilypond examples we went through.

February 2020

We learned about the engineering design process and used teamwork to navigate an obstacle course.

May 2019

music and sound! we did many experiments and demonstrations:

straw flute: when you blow across an open cylinder or container, it makes a sound. the sound changes based on how much air is present. demonstrated the straw oboe and had everyone make one. try changing length using second straw, cutting holes, changing size of opening with mouth.

demonstrated the related ideas on a flute and trombone

striking glasses with water as bells. we made a few glasses with notes to play "Mary Had a Little Lamb"

chladni plates

drum made from a tin can and balloon

amplify sound with a balloon (more about solid vs gas transmission of sound waves)

February 2019

We built periscopes using convex and concave mirrors to see things above a table while we were hiding below it.

We experimented more with projectors.

We played with spherical (convex and concave) mirrors to discover their properties and discuss how they could be used in telescopes.

We drew ray diagrams to see how refraction works.

We assembled telescope kits.

December 2018

We did some astronomy and optics activities from the NY 4-H Science Toolkit (search for astronomy in this page: https://nys4-h.org/projects).

Activities we did:

March 2018

computer science - map coloring, and artificial intelligence using dice, coins, and rock-paper-scissors. This was a preview of this year's National Youth Science Day kit.

November 2017

We did several physics magic tricks

October 2017

We learned about genetics and extracted DNA from strawberries. We used the DNA for Dinner curriculum.

April 2017

We learned about Rube-Goldberg machines and brainstormed ideas for making one.

March 2017

We learned about whales!

February 2017

We built weight-supporting structures out of paper. We started by holding up a book, and eventually held up Brylan.

December 2016

We used popsicle sticks to learn about tension by making unstable structures that pop apart.

October 2016

We used the National Youth Science Day kits to learn about propellers, drones, and lift.

September 2016

We made aluminum foil boats to hold as many pennies as possible and learned about buoyancy.

July 2016

We visited the Foothill College Observatory and were treated to views of Mars, Saturn, Jupiter (+ 3 moons!), and the Messier 13 globular cluster on their telescope.

June 2016

We learned how to make a simple but fast kind of wind spinner (a three-blade turbine style). Everyone tried to make theirs go as fast as possible. Some got close to 400 RPM!

May 2016

We started the Wind Spinners activity with Science Journal. Everybody made up their own design for a wind spinner and we learned how to test them and measure their RPM.

April 2016

We used the new Science Journal app to explore our environment. We measured sound intensity, light levels, and acceleration, so see what interesting patterns we could find around the ranch.

March 2016

We imagined what salt would look like if each grain was the size of our hands and drew it. Then we used microscopes to look at sea salt, table salt, sugar, pepper, and miscellaneous found objects.

February 2016

Connor taught us about forces on flying objects (drag, lift, propulsion, and gravity) and we used our knowledge to make paper airplanes.

January 2016

Rachel, a civil engineer, taught us about bridges. We made beam bridges out of paper to support as many pennies as possible.

December 2015

We learned about computational thinking using a few problems from computer science: Map coloring, sharing information while keeping secrets, and how to guess which number I'm thinking. Activities were based on lessons from http://csunplugged.org.

November 14th, 2015

We learned about geospatial science using activities from New York 4-H. Our first activity demonstrated how you can measure distance if you know how fast a signal is moving and how long it took to reach the target (going from a GPS satellite to a handheld receiver). The second activity showed that if you gather this data point from three or more GPS satellites, you can determine the location of the receiver (the user).

October 17th, 2015

We will be doing the National Youth Science Day (NYSD) activity, Motion Commotion, to learn about the physics of moving objects (like cars) with some takeaways about safe, undistracted driving.

September 27th, 2015

We had 23 youth attend (well, 23 signed in) to watch the lunar eclipse and experiment with micro eclipses on with polystyrene balls and a lamp. Clouds blocked our viewing, but we did science anyway!

Followup: Watch this video that describes the "supermoon" eclipses we've had the pleasure of experiencing recently: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gzgSuJM5O8.