Not comfortable teaching computer science? Can’t tell a bit from a byte and think Python is a snake?

Join the crowd – but not for long. States, local school districts, and the federal government are making computer science education a priority.

Why the urgency? While digital technologies have transformed how people work, play, and even learn, fewer than 25 percent of American K-12 schools currently teach computer science. The proportion is far lower in elementary and middle schools.

That’s a problem for the U.S. economy, where nearly half a million high-paying STEM jobs are open across the country – half of them in computer science-related fields.Don’t look to universities to fill the need.  A new report  from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine found that the growing number of jobs in the computing field far outpaces the number of students earning bachelor’s degrees in computer science and similar fields. According to the nonpartisan advocacy group Code.org, just under 43,000 computer science students graduated into the workforce last year. Already, a surge of interest in studying computer science is straining university resources.

States aren’t waiting for higher education to get cracking. In 2016, Virginia became the first state to require computer science for all K-12 students,  approving new standards of learning in November. Three other states – Texas, Arkansas, and West Virginia – require all high schools to offer the subject, though it is not mandatory, and 23 states and the District of Columbia allow computer science to count toward fulfilling high school graduation requirements, according to the latest report from the Education Commission of the States. And Arizona’s governor recently secured funds to launch a statewide computer science initiative, including developing academic standards and teacher professional development.

Meanwhile, the federal government’s CS for All effort, a public-private partnership led by the National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Education, has supported the development of such innovations as the new Advanced Placement Computer Science Principles curricular framework and CS for All Teachers, a comprehensive site with help squad, tips, events, and other resources for teaching computer science. And in September, President Trump signed a Presidential Memorandum expanding funding to promote access to high-quality STEM education, with a particular emphasis on computer science for K-12 students. Tech companies are kicking in $300 million in addition.

Schools don’t have to go it alone. Two Duke University students created an after-school program called Mobile Citizens to bring computer science to low-income middle school students. Run through Citizen Schools, a nonprofit focused on enrichment programs for low-income students, the program offers an extended apprenticeship where students develop their own mobile app.

How much of an impact such experiences have is the subject of a five-year NSF-funded study of coding camps, university led summer camps, Girls Who Code, Black Girls Code, and other informal CS programs.

High school students like Sharon Lin don’t need a study to demonstrate the impact of such opportunities. The New York high schooler was among the 2016 Congressional App Challenge winners for her iPhone application that helped users learn about candidates and issues in local and national elections, then find their polling station to exercise their franchise. It’s name: iVote.

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If Spider-Man’s creator says STEM is inspiring and powerful, who wouldn’t jump at the chance to invent a superhero inspired by science?

Spidey’s creator Stan Lee, the comic book author and former head of Marvel Comics, has a foundation that focuses on literacy, education and the arts. That’s why he hopes students in grades 6 to 12 will dream up a STEM-powered superhero in the National Science Foundation’s Generation Nano competition. Winners can earn scholarships and present their comics and short videos work at the USA Science and Engineering Fair in Washington, D.C., in early April, 2018.

• Who: Individuals or teams of students in grades 6-12
• What: Create a written entry and either a comic or a 90-second video that illustrates your science-powered superhero in action.
• When: Entries are due Jan. 8, 2018.

Prizes: Cash – Scholarship

• First place winner receives $1,500 per team member.
• Second place winner receives $1,000 per team member.
• Teacher honorarium receives $500 — awarded to a teacher(s) that encouraged the first place teams / individuals on their journey.

Start here to learn about the competition. See storytelling and other resources. Register HERE.

Past winners include Dilatant, a crime-fighting superhero created by Hannah Kim and Daniel Kim from Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology:

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Think computer science is only for an elite group of professionals? An Hour of Code could change your mind – and inspire your students!

Join more than 63,000 schools, libraries, and other organizations around the world to celebrate Computer Science Education Week this year by hosting hour-of-code events from December 4 to 10. (Get how-to details here… or see How To Host an Epic Hour of Code webinar.)

The “largest learning event in history” – which marks the birthday of computer pioneer Grace Hopper – includes Star Wars-based tutorials for beginners as young as four, a way-finding with code lesson from Disney’s Moana, inspiring videos about learning computer science, a new Minecraft Hour of Code adventure for student in grades 2 and up, create a virtual pet activity from Grok Learning, and even “unplugged”Hour of Code activities for people without a computer or Internet connection (available in Spanish).

Check out these teacher-led activities and other educator resources to get free curricula and ideas for your classroom. There are also resources for policy advocacy, including a state-by-state list of proposed, successful, and failed legislative efforts to promote computer science education.

The National Science Foundation-sponsored Computer Science for All Teachers Computer Science Education Week photo contestinitiative includes a website with free resources, teaching tips, help desk, blog, and event calendar with webinars, hackathon challenges, and contests – including the .

No computer science teacher at your school? Edhesive offers a free AP Computer Science massive, open online course (MOOC). It’s one of more than a dozen providers of curriculum, classroom tutorials, and platforms for teaching computer science to kids that you can integrate in your lessons.

Seek more information? The September 2013 eGFI Teachers newsletter focuses on computer engineering activities. Cybersecurity was the theme of the October 2015 newsletter, as does the eGFI Teachers blog post with computer science education resources.

Meanwhile, states are moving to adopt new computer science education standards based on the K-12 Computer Science Framework. According to the Atlantic magazine (October 19, 2016), Arkansas, Indiana, and Florida have made major computer-science pushes at the K-12 level, as have cities like New York and Chicago. California is moving to create its own standards, as are Virginia, South Carolina, and Washington state.

Download the full standards or get tips for integrating computer science into literacy, math, and science instruction from the Computer Science Teachers Association, which developed the standards.

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What do computer pioneer Ada Lovelace, Hitler’s atomic bomb effort, and the Slinky have in common?

All are among the National Science Teachers Association’s inaugural list of Best STEM Books.

Culled from nearly 300 submissions, the top picks for 2017 range from picture books to histories, covering topics as diverse as coding and the popular toy Slinky. Each work was chosen, NSTA explains, because it “reinforces STEM thinking—modeling innovation, demonstrating authentic problem-solving and assimilation of new ideas, all while exploring solutions that show progressive change or improvement.”

Best STEM Books reflects the growing interest by teachers in differentiating between the purely science books on the annual roster of NSTA’s Outstanding Science Trade Books (jointly created with the Children’s Book Council) and those that encompass engineering, technology, mathematics, invention,  and STEM more broadly.

Winnowing the top 31 titles from hundreds of worthy entrants was “a fascinating process,” says volunteer reviewer Pamela Lottero-Perdue, a professor of STEM education at Towson University and chair of the American Association for Engineering Education’s P-12 Committee. (Photo, right)

To be selected, a book had to “break free of ‘how to’ in order to represent STEM thinking,” she explained in debuting the list at NSTA’s regional conference in Baltimore, Md., in October. “I read a lot this year about poop,” she laughed, pointing to several exemplars. “They’re really interesting… but not STEM.”

The books that made the cut reflect “the kind of open-ended thinking we want students to engage in,” explained Lottero-Perdue. Among her favorites for teaching P-12 engineering is TickTock Banneker’s Clock, a picture book that describes how self-taught scientist Benjamin Banneker, inspired by a pocket watch he’d once seen, built a strike clock using a pocket knife. She also enjoyed The Inventor’s Secret, about inventors Thomas Edison and Henry Ford and how they persevered, designed, learned from failure, and redesigned.

Several titles, including Whoosh! – about SuperSoaker creator Lonnie Johnson’s stream of inventions – focus on entrepreneurship. Another group explores computer science, including the picture book Hello Ruby: Adventures in Coding and several biographies about English mathematician Ada Lovelace. History buffs will enjoy Sabotage; The Mission to Destroy Hitler’s Atomic Bomb, a page-turning true tale of nine Norwegian commandos who, faced with Germany’s invasion, change the course of World War II as they explore multiple solutions to life-threatening problems.

Historic figures aren’t the only subjects whose biographies made the 2017 list. Breakthrough described how Jack Andraka, who as an openly gay high school student in Maryland invented an inexpensive test for pancreatic cancer, persists to develop several early-cancer detection methods and win national recognition.

Best STEM Books is a joint project of several organizations: ASEE, the International Technology and Engineering Educators Association, NSTA, the Society of Elementary Presidential Awardees, and the Children’s Book Council.

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Wearable Device Challenge

• Who: Middle and high school students
• When: April 17, 2018
• Where: North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC
• Deadline to register teams: February 15, 2018

“Fashion sense” takes on a whole new meaning in North Carolina State University’s Wearable Device Challenge for middle and high school students.

Hosted by the National Science Foundation-funded Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Advanced Self-Powered Systems of Integrated Sensors and Technologies (ASSIST), the contest asks teams to follow the engineering design process to create a health-monitoring device for a person, animal, or both, based on environmental factors.

The challenge integrates concepts from the One Health Initiative and the Grand Challenges of Engineering – specifically health informatics.

ASSIST education director Elena N. Veety, who recently earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from NC State, won the American Society for Engineering Education’s 2017 Best Paper Award for her research on the contest as a way to boost STEM learning. “Within this prompt, we consistently see an amazing range of creative and critical issues that participants choose to address,” she and her coauthors wrote. Students tackled such diverse, real-world problems as the health and safety of farm workers and farm animals, first-responder exposure to danger, hydration and UV exposure for athletes, and monitoring of chronic conditions like sleep apnea, asthma, and seizures.

The program, which includes teacher professional development and a series of Wearable Device Challenge lesson plans, also fosters such essential professional skills as teamwork and communication while exposing students to the engineering design process, electronic circuits, computer programming, sensors, energy harvesting, prototyping, and other technical topics.

Teams upload their designs and all supporting materials to Google for preliminary judging by graduate research assistants, professors from NC State, and industry experts.

[Photo, above , shows Wake STEM Early College High School team whose Guiding Hand project took 1st place in the 2016 contest.]

High school students are asked to design a working prototype of their device along with an ad campaign and poster.

Middle school students must design a 3-D model or prototype of their device along with an ad campaign and poster.

They design their devices using platforms like Arduino Unos,  Lilypads, Littlebits circuit set, or TI Sensortag and must be able to articulate how future iterations of their design can be self-powered.

Register no later than February 15, 2018

Opening graphic by Jessica L. Tozer, U.S. Department of Defense, from a 2014 article on military research on wearable biosensors.

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Lesson from IEEE’s TryComputing.org. Click HERE for PDF of full lesson from TryEngineering.org. 

Summary

In this lesson on using mathematical modeling to solve real-world problems, middle and high school students work in teams to build a graph-theory model of their city’s map, then use it to find the best route to school, evaluate their solutions, and present their reflections to the class.

Grade level: 7 -12

Time: Two 45-minute sessions

Engineering connection

Graph theory – the study of graphs – is a visual way to represent or model relationships between objects that is used computer science, engineering, and mathematics. For example, software engineers use graphs to represent communication networks, data organization, computational devices, the flow of computation, and more. On social network websites like Facebook, software engineers exploit graph theory to analyze your “friends,” track your and their interests, and market products. They also can use graph theory to design integrated circuits and represent the structure of a website. The vertices are the available web pages and the edges are the connections (directional) between pages.

Learning objectives

After doing this activity, students should be able to:

• Understand and develop a mathematical model
• Apply mathematical modeling and graph theory to solve a problem
• Understand computer algorithmic thinking
• Work in teams

Learning Standards

NCTM’s Principles and Standards for School Mathematics

Number and Operations Standard: Compute fluently and make reasonable estimates

Geometry Standard:

• Specify locations and describe spatial relationships using coordinate geometry and other representational systems
• Use visualization, spatial reasoning, and geometric modeling to solve problems

Measurement Standard:

• Understand measurable attributes of objects and the units, systems, and processes of measurement
• Apply appropriate techniques, tools, and formulas to determine measurements.

Problem Solving Standard:

• Apply and adapt a variety of appropriate strategies to solve problems.
• Solve problems that arise in mathematics and in other contexts.
• Representation: Use representations to model and interpret physical, social and mathematical phenomena

Common Core State Standards for Mathematics

• Quantities • Reason quantitatively and use units to solve problems
• Modeling with Geometry • Apply geometric concepts in modeling situations
• International Technology and Engineering Educators Association’s Standards for Technical Literacy
• Standard 2: Students will develop an understanding of the core concepts of technology.
• Standard 3: Students will develop an understanding of the relationships among technologies and the connections between technology and other fields of study.

Graph theory tutorials and activities from the University of Tennessee, Martin

Materials

Student Resource Sheets [page 6 of PDF]

• Discrete Mathematics and Graph Theory

Student Worksheets

• Search Shortest Path [Pages 7-9 of PDF]
• Review & Evaluation [Page 10 of PDF]

For each team:

• Map of local town or city
• Ruler
• eraser
• pencil
• pencil sharpener
• marker pen

Procedure

1. Show students the Student Reference Sheet. This may be read in class, or provided as reading material for the prior night’s homework.

2. Divide students into groups of four or five.

3. To introduce the lesson, discuss with students the use of networks in daily life. For instance road and rail systems, connections via social media and computer networks. Advanced option: Make a presentation using electronic map software or automotive navigation system.

4. Teams use the grid on their worksheet to calculate distances between points on the map and use the model to develop the most efficient route to school.

5. Student teams complete an evaluation/reflection sheet and share their experiences with the class.

Lesson extension

Optional writing activity: Explore how the Internet finds the website you want when you tell your browser to go to CNN.com or Google.com. Write an essay or paragraph explaining how this relates to the graph problem described in this unit.

Related activities

In these TeachEngineering activities contributed by the College of information Science and Technology at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, students learn and apply concepts and methods of graph theory to analyze data for different relationships, such as friendships and physical proximity. They are asked about relationships between people and how those relationships can be illustrated. As part of the lesson, students are challenged to find the social graph of their friends.

For middle school activities, see TeachEngineering’s It’s a Connected World: The Beauty of Network Science curricular unit developed by Johns Hopkins University’s Whiting School of Engineering.

Graph Theory in Drama [Grades 9-12; 30 minutes]

Making the Connection [Grades 9-12; 60 minutes.]

One of the simplest uses of graph theory is a family tree that shows how different people are related. Another application is social networks like Facebook, where a network of “friends” and their “friends” can be represented using graphs. In this TeachEngineering activity contributed by the College of information Science and Technology at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, students learn and apply concepts and methods of graph theory to analyze data for different relationships such as friendships and physical proximity. They are asked about relationships between people and how those relationships can be illustrated. As part of the lesson, students are challenged to find the social graph of their friends.

Graphing the Spread of Disease [Grades 9-12; 90 minutes]

Students simulate disease transmission by collecting data based on their proximity to other students. One option for measuring proximity is by having Bluetooth devices “discover” each other. After data is collected, students apply graph theory to analyze and summarize their data and findings in lab report format. Students learn real-world engineering applications of graph theory and see how numerous instances of real-world relationships can be more thoroughly understood by applying graph theory. Also, by applying graph theory the students are able to come up with possible solutions to limit the spread of disease. This activity is intended to be part of a computer science curriculum and knowledge of the Java programming language is required. To complete the activity, a computer with Java installed and appropriate editing software is needed.

Curb the Epidemic! [Grades 7-10; 45 minutes] 

Using a website simulation tool, students build on their understanding of random processes on networks to interact with the graph of a social network of individuals and simulate the spread of a disease. They decide which two individuals on the network are the best to vaccinate in an attempt to minimize the number of people infected and “curb the epidemic.” Since the results are random, they run multiple simulations and compute the average number of infected individuals before analyzing the results and assessing the effectiveness of their vaccination strategies.

Recommended Reading

• A Beginner’s Guide to Discrete Mathematics (ISBN: 978-0817642692)
• Introductory Graph Theory (ISBN: 978-0486247755)
• Beginning Programming All-In-One Desk Reference For Dummies (ISBN: 978- 0470108543)
• Schaum’s Outline of Graph Theory (ISBN: 978-0070054899)

Credit: Lesson developed by Shuang Liu, an IEEE Student Member from Hannover, Germany, as part of the IEEE TryComputing.org Lesson Plan Competition.

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Social and emotional learning is a hot topic these days. That’s because research suggests that students can suffer academically when they’re having a hard time outside the classroom, whether at home, on the school bus, or in the playground. When kids feel happy, safe, and included, they learn better.

Many schools, districts, and even states are searching for ways to gauge student well-being. California, for example, recently joined a new multi-state initiative launched by the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning, a Chicago-based nonprofit. And many states are debating whether – and how – to include student well-being on state accountability measures.

They might want to check with Gina Greco. For more than 15 years, the Auburn, Wash., fourth grade teacher used simple pencil-and-paper surveys to track how her students were doing.  “I understand and appreciate data,” she tells eGFI, noting how she and her colleagues look at math and reading data every week. Yet she wished there was a simple assessment to reveal how kids were feeling. “We’re not going to move them academically unless we address whether they are happy in life,” says Greco. An online screener “seemed like a natural,” but she lacked the expertise to develop one.

Serendipity struck while chatting with a friend, Andy Orr, who happened to be the Software Development Program manager at nearby Green River College. She made a pitch to his undergraduates in the spring of 2016. Four  – Satinder Kaur, Jami Schwarzwalder, Benjamin Arnold, and Joshua Hawks –  dove in. Eight weeks later, they debuted  a web-based app called Emotions Count that gives kids a safe and confidential way to report how they’re feeling with the click of an emoticon. There’s also an open form for students to write about what’s going on in their lives. Behind the scenes, the information is instantly collected and presented on a secure teacher dashboard, color-coded to flag those students who, based on their responses, may need intervention. [Read the college’s news story.]

After first checking with her district’s superintendent about tech bandwidth and seeking parents’ permission, Greco began field testing the app in her classroom. It proved a hit with students. “They just loved it!” she reports. The reaction was similar in another district also beta-testing the app and providing feedback.

Greco particularly appreciates being able to receive instantaneous information on her students’ emotional health. rather than have students wonder if anybody is “listening to my worries and frustrations?'” While she might survey the class every two weeks, students can grab a ChromeBook and report an incident at recess or other problem. This quick alert lets Greco address problems “before they fester” by chatting one-on-one with the student or raising the issue of bullying, say, with the whole class. “Instead of a problem simmering and escalating, we could meet it head on,” says Greco.

Greco, who continues to work with recent Green River software development graduates Jami Schwarzwalder and Kimberly Praxel to refine Emotions Count based on teacher feedback, would like to see her app “touch as many students as possible.” She’d also like to make the tool a bit more “teacher-friendly” by allowing instructors to ask different questions based on their students’ needs. Her goal is not to make money but to find a partner or investor who can deliver an affordable, accessible tool that teachers can use to boost engagement and learning.

“My dream,” says Greco, “is to find a partner with a vision similar to mine to ensure that the needs and hearts of all our students are our number one priority.” But, she adds, “it’s kind of a struggle to find a fit” or right people to lead this expensive effort.

Since news of Emotions Count broke on King5 News last fall, Greco says many teachers have approached her expressing interest. She wants to get feedback – particularly from students – before trying to app to the next level. (Teachers input already has led to the substitution of stable emojis for the original animated examples that spun around on the screen.)

In the meantime, Greco is hardly resting on her tech laurels. She remains involved with Green River techies, who have developed a similar well-being screen for middle and high school students. The team now is looking for a classroom to field test the app.

The Emotions Count team. From left: Jami Schwarzwalder, Satinder Kaur, Benjamin Arnold, Joshua Hawks, Gina Greco (client), Tina Ostrander (instructor), Megan Orr (teacher), and Ron Quartel (agile coach). Photo from Green River College news story.

Nor is Greco the only teacher with a knack for apps. As NEA Today reports, Nick Gattuso, a former Bell Labs engineer turned computer science teacher at Point Pleasant Borough High School in New Jersey, and his students have developed a suite of learning applications to assist students with disabilities. One of the Panther Assisted Learning Services applications teaches them how to go grocery shopping—with a shopping-cart simulator. Another one helps them count money.

The students, who were honored last year by the New Jersey Board of Education, also developed an emergency-response app that school officials could use to notify students of emergencies when they were taking off-campus lunch breaks. The presented it and other apps at the New Jersey School Boards Association’s 2017 STEAM Tank competition in October.

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ADVANCE YOUR CAREER

GEM-ASEE Doctoral Engineering Research Showcase

January 22-23, 2018

 Mayflower Hotel, Washington, D.C.

APPLICATIONS STILL OPEN!

Applications are now being accepted for a first-of-its-kind  Doctoral Engineering Research Showcase sponsored by the National GEM Consortium and the American Society for Engineering Education. Doctoral students, postdoctoral fellows, and new faculty are invited to display their leading-edge technical research and connect with potential government agency sponsors and academic employers.

You will present your research—which may be interdisciplinary or a single engineering discipline—in poster format. This event will be held in conjunction with an Agency/University Fair that will feature representatives from government research agencies and universities seeking to hire faculty. The showcase also will feature interactive breakout sessions on (a) advancing a research program and managing the research enterprise; (b) innovations in teaching and the promotion of learning; (c) professional service opportunities; and (d) maintaining work-life balance.

Registration fees are just $50 for doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows, and $150 for new faculty members (within 14 months of their initial appointment).

The application deadline is Friday, November 17.  Decisions will be announced by November 27.

Apply online at: https://www.asee.org/public/events

This event is partially underwritten by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

For more information please visit https://drs.asee.org or contact drs@asee.org

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Baseball traditions – from bases and bats to pitchers and catchers – have changed little over the past 150 years. But in modern times, engineers have contributed immensely to understanding and improving performance, safety, and equipment.

Consider the ball and bat. As Lloyd Smith and James Sherwood note in their delightful April 2010 Mechanical Engineering article, Engineering Our Favorite Pastime, tests have been developed to separately measure the ball’s elasticity and stiffness, thus ensuring that Major League Baseball remains consistent from year to year. [Read a delightful account from the Smithsonian’s Collections Blog of an early attempt to mechanize the stitching of baseballs, which are still hand sewn.]

Evaluating different bats on a common scale – the speed of a hit ball coming off of them – scientists and engineers have been able to raise the performance of metal and composite bats to the level of wood bats. Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology mechanical engineering graduate Keenan Long, a former NCAA Division III All American honorable mention catcher, invented a revolutionary bat that allows the hitter’s hands to rotate independently, increasing the power of the swing.

In campus laboratories nationwide, engineering researchers are developing better equipment and ways to improve player performance. At the University of Michigan, for example, engineers like Noel Perkins, a professor of mechanical engineering,  are working on a device to measure swings in an effort to help batters perfect theirs – including developing a wireless inertial measurement unit to measure the three-dimensional motion while you swing the bat. In this short video, What Makes the Perfect Swing in Baseball, he explains the technology, which could be used to improve golf swings and fly-fishing casts as well.

Southern Illinois University researcher Peter Fadde also is helping baseball players improve their swing–using virtual reality. As he notes in this 2017 Frugal Engineering TEDx Talk, hitting a baseball travelling at 98 miles per hour three times in 10 tries is considered very successful but the real wonders is that anyone can hit it at all.

Ballpark design has evolved to enhance safety along with the fans’ experience. Rare blueprints show how stadium technology evolved, as this National Geographic article explains. While civil engineers design ever-more spacious ballparks, electrical and computer engineers are helping stadiums harness the Internet of Things to reduce energy and other operational costs by 25 percent. In 2017, the Cincinnati Reds rolled out the nation’s first order-by-app ballpark kiosk. Then there’s the 37,500 “living park,” a futuristic ballpark that Sports Illustrated asked Populous, a leading designer of ballparks, to envision. (Photo, below)

Want to bring economics and engineering together? Check out this engineering economics and technical communications design activity by Rowan University’s Kevin Dahm and James Newell. Meanwhile, at Dartmouth’s Thayer School of Engineering, professor Rachel Obbard teaches a course called “Materials in Sport Equipment” that highlights the materials and manufacturing of such things as mitts, helmets, baseballs, bats and cleats.

Baseball also can inspire innovations in other fields. Jeff Weers, a Novartis scientist and pitcher, used his knowledge of whiffle balls to develop a way of delivering more potent doses of drugs to the lungs than is possible with current dry inhalers. In the process, he transformed particle engineering.

Baseball also can provide a great context for teaching STEM. North Carolina Public TV’s Science of Baseball video [5:30] looks at the national pastime with a physics teacher and offers such fun facts and questions as whether a big bat or fast bat will knock a ball out of the park. For her 10th grade analytic geometry class, Georgia math teacher Nicolina Scarpelli created a lesson called The Pythagorean Theorem in Baseball. The unit included taking students out to the high school diamond to measure the distances between the bases, sketch the baseball diamond, and use algebraic properties to understand the Pythagorean Theorem, its converse, and properties of special right angles.

Teaching physics? Check out the Physics and Acoustics of Baseball and Softball Bats, by Penn State professor Daniel A. Russell. (Photo, right) He is working to take the sting out a whacking the ball with a vibration-absorbing device built into the knob of the bat. Other useful sources include the Physics of Baseball on How Stuff Works.

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