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Final Version - STEM is Fun! for Everyone
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STEM is Fun!

for Everyone

A FREE activity booklet for those who want to learn engineering principals!

This STEM is Fun! for Everyone booklet is for anyone who wants to have fun with Science, Technology, Engineering and Math. It’s a great resource for schools, clubs, Boy and Girl Scout Troops, homeschoolers, science fairs and birthday parties. People have been asking the POBots how we do it all, so we are sharing what we know. Have Fun!

For more information about the POBots, please visit:

www.POBots.com.

For more information about SBPLI School-Business Partnerships of Long Island, Inc., please visit:

http://www.sbpli-lifirst.org/.

For more information about FIRST Robotics, please visit:

http://www.firstinspires.org/.

If you would like more information about how the POBots can help your Boy or Girl Scout Troop, school, or community host a STEM is Fun! Activity Night, please email: pobots353@gmail.com and put “STEM is Fun!” in the subject line.

Squishy Circuits - Electricity

NOTE: This project involves electricity and should be supervised by an adult.

Materials:

Instructions:

  1. Make two blobs of play dough - they should not be touching!
  2. Place an LED with one end in each blob.
  3. Put the battery snap on the battery, and place one end of the wire in each blob.
  4. If the LED does not light up, turn it around so the wire in the left piece is now in the right piece and the wire in the right piece is now in the left piece.
  5. Watch it glow!

Things to Try:

The Science:

When you plug the LED light into the play-dough, you create a circuit. A circuit is a path through which electricity can flow. Circuits need to be made out of conductors, or materials that let electricity flow easily. Play-dough is a conductor but is not one of the best ones. The best conductors are usually metals.

Why did the LEDs turn off when you touched the play dough together? That was called a short circuit. Electricity wants to take the fastest path, so it flowed right through the play-dough without going through the LED.

Materials that do not let electricity flow easily are called insulators. Some materials like rubber or plastic are great insulators. These help prevent you from shocking yourself if you touch the wires.

When you had a bunch of lights across the same two pieces of play-dough, you should have seen them get brighter. This is because they were in parallel. When in parallel, if you take one light in the middle out, the rest stay on. This is because the electricity can travel to the next light through the playdough.

When you had lights connected across multiple pieces of playdough they got dimmer. This is because they were in series. When in series, if you take one light out in the middle, they all turn off. This is because now there is no way for the electricity to travel across the playdough.

Straw Rockets - Aerodynamics

Materials:

Instructions:

  1. Cut out a 3 inch by 5 inch rectangle piece of paper
  2. Take that piece of paper and wrap it around the straw (Don’t make it too tight or too loose) and tape it
  3. Sketch fins like this or print out the image

  1. Cut out the fins and tape them on as shown in the image

  1. Bend the rocket body at the top to make a cone and tape it

  1. Now your straw rocket is ready to be launched
  2. Make sure your launch area is empty and mark your starting point
  3. Then 3…2…1 blow into the straw and launch the rocket. Watch it FLY!!!
  4. Measure the distance your rocket has traveled and record it
  5. Now there is only one thing left to do. Try to make IMPROVEMENTS!

Things to Try:

The Science:

This experiment tests Newton’s three laws of motion. The First Law of Motion states that an object will not change its motion unless a force acts on it. This is demonstrated with the rocket being at rest until you blow into the straw. Once you blow into the straw the rocket stays in motion until acted upon by another force (gravity) which brings the rocket to the ground.

The Second Law of Motion states that the force on an object is equal to its mass times its acceleration. This means that the heavier the object is, the more force it will take to accelerate that object. In this experiment, when you add more paper clips (mass) to your rocket it requires you to blow with more force to travel the same distance.

The Third Law of Motion states that when two objects interact, they apply forces to each other of equal magnitude and opposite direction. When we blow into the straw the air pressure inside the straw increases allowing the rocket to launch through the air.

Page 8: Foil Boats - Buoyancy

Materials:

Instructions:

  1. Fill your container with water
  2. Cut out around a 5 inch by 6 inch piece of aluminum foil
  3. Fold up the sides of the foil to make a boat

  1. Place the boat in the bowl of water
  2. Begin to add washers to your boat
  3. Count how many pennies your boat can hold before the boat sinks

Things To Try:

The Science:  

There are two primary forces. The first force is gravity. Gravity pulls the boat downwards. The second force is buoyancy which pushes the boat up toward the surface. Buoyancy is the ability of an object to float in water.

The gravitational force is based on the weight of the foil and the pennies. The force of buoyancy is based on the weight of the water displaced by the boat.

Your boat will float as long as the force of buoyancy is greater than the force of gravity.

The amount of space a boat takes up can help spread out the gravity over a larger area. This means that a larger boat usually holds more weight than a smaller one. Spreading the gravity over larger surfaces is also how some small bugs like water striders can run on water!