Next evening session - Wednesday subject to weather

Hello STEMsters, hoping to have last session of the year on Wednesday evening. Will explain future projects and targets - lot to fit in.

Cancel this week STEMSTERS will continue when weather improves

Hope to make up lost time - lots of interesting projects to do, However commonsense stipulates that any risks must be eliminated regarding the awful weather.

Testing POP POP boats session at BGS

Here are some more POP POP boats being tested.
A very impressive effort - next we move on to some electronics work.

Making our pop pop boats

The students began to make and test their first pop pop boats tonight after school. We will be thinking about how to improve them and if we can add items such as funnels, superstructures etc.

Boats made from cans which have been press moulded into formers.We can make our own motors but to save time I have bought some motors for the students to fit.

Drinks consumed moulds started for POP POP boats

Students this week needed to prepare for next week first by consuming fizzy drinks as we needed the cans. These will be used to make pop pop boat hulls and other parts.

This done we concentrated on making our propeller boats work. Lots of testing - solving stability - and buoyancy, adjustments failures and the need to redesign moulds to make them more buoyant.

Building Propeller power boats

Started by consuming a well known fixxy drink - need the cans to build steam engine in the near future. Needed to improve boat hulls this week - motors, props ( grp ) etc issued. Testing next week - will post pictures.

Stem Night moved to Wednesday 3rd November

Hi STEMSTERS please note that I am away on Tuesday ( STEM at Sheffield Uni ) so the meeting needs to be on Wednesday this week.
NOT Tuesday but WEDNESDAY 3rd November.

Sorry for short notice

Stem boating sub plot

Making hull and superstructure.
Developing our making skills utilising the vacuum former.

Well done on Y6 parents night

It was a busy evening for visitors to come and see the school. We had STEMsters helping with the BUILD A TOWER challenge, also with the hands on boat building and testing, and with the vacuum forming. Wow I needed a rest after that.
Any parents who visited and would like me to send information about projects please call the school and leave a message.

Mr. Geekie

Boats - creating mould for vac forming

We are making a mould to use to make a boat hull. This will be used to build two different boats. One submarine motor powered and one conventional screw propeller. We will look at the effect the different shapes have on timings.
Mr. Geekie

Towers and bridges in prep for Y6 parents evening

Pictures to come soon.

We are preparing to offer parents a 10 minute challenge to build a tower ( or bridge )using materials provided. The STEM..sters will assist. We are undertaking a fun version of a more complex challenge.
This is a simplified exercise which is available by sending me an email - I will gladly send file.

The exercise is part of a collection originally designed for sixth form leadership skills development and which are also used by universities and employers for selection / evaluation purposes.

Mr. Geekie

PARABOLIC MICROPHONE a stem club project

Here I am testing the viability of making a parabolic microphone. We will be looking at "sound"( or should that be listening to ) later on the course - this is one aspect. I think you WILL ENJOY.

Mr. Geekie

Beginning boat design - bow shapes.

Trough set up to test how long a square ended boat took to cover a set distance. Times were 1.9 seconds average. After front was cut to provide a boat shape the time reduced to 1.12 seconds.
Project to continue.
Mr. Geekie.

Calendar now "live" and on display in my room

Hi everyone - I have sorted out the calendar for this, our final year of the original 3 year plan. It is on the web site and on display in my room.
Hope to start week after next ( Tuesday 28th Sept. )
First topic to involve h2o.

Mr. Geekie

Marble bridge problem

Here students can be seen trying to solve a problem which requires transporting a marble from one tower to another.

Geography linking with STEM

An interesting idea is to employ the popular newspaper simulation within STEM. Here our Head of Geography was welcomed to the club and he delivered and interesting one off session which required students to design a newspaper front page. The context revolved around F1 racing - thus linking with our F1 work.

Sled kite workshop

Here are some images from the evening session from the 18th May 2010.
Sled kites are a reliable introduction into kite making and everyone succeeded in making a kite which flew well. It can be folded up easily for use later.

Balloon launch ... and chase, more to come

Balloons

Pictures to come soon, what an evening. We launched successfully in the school hall and established that all was well with our balloons. Unfortunately the weather proved rather too blustery for efficient flying. This resulted in our frantic chasing after the liberated balloons only to see some unfortunate outcomes. One balloon was swallowed up by the local quarry ..... we think, and another after dodging a tree, became a torn victim of dubious retrieval methods.
We hold one balloon in reserve to fly in calmer conditions.

F1 with Mr.Hamshaw-Hart

We have made some great progress with F1 - Mr. Hamshaw-Hart will explain to students tonight. Next session will be F1 and the following will be the BALLOON launch - weather permitting.
Mr. Geekie and Mr. Goodwin have been at a year 7 parents' evening.

F1 and out .... for now

We ran a race to determine the details of our winner so we could send thes off for the regional competition, so fingers crossed
We will pick up the STEM CLUB after Easter. It will be the third week back when we will hopefully launch our hot air balloons.
Check the calendar in Mr. Geekie's room.

Calculating balloon volume

Mr Hamshaw led a very interesting session showing students how to calculate the volume of the balloons they had made. This involved references to calculus and also using some very clever software.
JG LHH

Next session

As mentioned the next session will be the first week back after half term.
Check the calendar in Mr Geekie's room at school, that will be Tuesday 23rd February. This session will explore how we can calculate the volume of the balloon.

Hot air balloon session 3 - finishing balloons

Really enjoyable session - here is an impression of the evening. The balloons will be launched after half term and it should be a bit special. We will need good, still weather - so let us keep our fingers crossed. The very next session will involve mathematics and examine the method of calculating the volume of the balloon.

Ballooning along - session 2

Mr. Geekie had stiff, sore knees after cutting all the profiles of your balloons. They are coming on well. Mr Hamshaw-Hart will look at volume calculations next week - an exciting prospect involving some deep maths!

Hot air ..........................balloon, starting the project

Okay here we are again, great to be back. I want everyone to make a hot air balloon - a BIG one which we can launch from school. We will look at air mass and also - using applied mathematics, calculate the volume of the variable shape balloon. This will be particularly interesting. Also we will look at CAD and how we can generate a swept profile thus creating a 3d object as a drawing.

Next meeting is on 19th Jan 2010

Wow 2010 already.
The next session is looking at air density and we aim to start making some hot air balloons, Mr Geekie has made a large form for us to trace around - can anyone tell Mr. Geekie the correct name for this segmented shape???
Hope to see you all soon - Mr. Geekie