The Overdeck Family Foundation and the Simons Foundation invites teachers to submit ideas for creative, hands-on STEM projects that can be done outside of school in a new Science Everywhere Innovation Challenge. Launched in partnership with DonorsChoose.org, the initiative seeks to catalyze math and science learning beyond school walls – the “informal” education that 75 percent of Nobel Prize winners in the sciences say sparked their interest in science.
A panel of judges led by astronaut Leland Melvin will award five $5,000 prizes to the best ideas.
Request funding only for project materials, not staff time, and keep total costs under $2,000.
Start fundraising! If you reach half of your funding goal through donations from the public on DonorsChoose.org, you’ll receive a one-to-one match from the Foundations. That means up to another $1,000!
Flipside Science is a youth-produced educational video series that tackles complex environmental engineering topics and empowers middle school students to make a difference. Developed by teachers and the California Academy of Science, the video series includes materials for middle school science classrooms but also are applicable for high schools.
Hosted by Academy youth, this engaging collection of videos and associated lessons explores how local communities are addressing environmental problems with solutions ranging from vertical farming to greywater recycling.
Units are aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards. Among them:
This unit explores environmental issues related to the food we grow and eat. It reviews key issues like food waste, urban farming, and diet, and underscores how simple choices we make can impact our planet.
Energy is an important part of our everyday lives. We use energy to cook, get around, and send emails. In this unit, we’ll explore the issues associated with fossil fuels and how people are coming up with innovative sustainable energy alternatives for a brighter future.
Humans depend on water, and our need for this precious resource is growing alongside our population. How will we meet the needs of the future without harming the environment? This unit explores key water issues, the water cycle, and some of the technology and techniques used to conserve water.
What: American Statistical Association Poster Contest
Who: Students in grades K to 12.
Deadline: April 1, 2017
Prizes: Up to $300 and a Texas Instrument calculator
Tables, charts, and other graphical displays of data can convey complex subjects clearly and quickly. That’s one reason the American Statistical Association hosts an annual poster competition for K-12 students to apply and showcase their knowledge. The deadline to submit is April 1, 2017.
Winning topics have ranged from the best position in the National Football League (above) to math class and self-esteem levels, peer influence on grades, and gender preference in social media, which were among the topics that took top honors in 2016.
Students may work individually or in teams. For those in the K–3 category, there is no restriction on the size of the team. For other categories, the maximum number of students per team is four. For teams with members from different grade levels, the highest grade determines the entry category.
Posters are judged for overall impact, clarity of message, appropriateness of the graphics for the data, and creativity. See this ASA K-12 Statistics webinar by Grand Valley University on working with students to create a statistics poster.
Winners receive the following:
First Prize
$300, a plaque, and a plaque for the school
Second Prize
$200 and a plaque
Third Prize $100 and a plaque
Honorable Mention
A plaque
First-place winners in grades 4–12 also will receive Texas Instruments graphing calculators. First-place winners in grades 4–6 and their advisers will receive TI-73 Explorer Graphing Calculators. The winners in grades 7–12 and their advisers will receive TI-84 Plus Silver Edition Graphing Calculators.
Complete the online poster competition entry form. Submissions must be postmarked no later than April 1, 2017.
Poster Competition
American Statistical Association
732 North Washington Street
Alexandria, VA 22314
In addition, these ASA branches host regional poster competitions:
The STEM Voice™ Video Competition is nation-wide opportunity for kids in grades 5-12 to artistically explore the importance of STEM.
Managed by the Coalition of State Bioscience Institutes, a group of nonprofits focused on life sciences education, entrepreneurship, and workforce development, the competition asks students to be creative and make a video (60 seconds or less) about why STEM is important to them – OR – who their STEM hero is and why. They can act in it, create an animation, sing – as long as the video is appropriate for all ages.
Three semifinalists, one from middle school (grades 5-8), one from high school, and one from a new Group category will be selected from each of the three regions, East Coast, Central, and West Coast. National grand prize winners can receive up to $700 in cash awards. Click HERE to see past winners.
Prizes: Up to $25,000 and a trip to attend a taping of Discovery’s “Top Young Scientist”
Deadline: April 19, 2017
The Young Scientist Challenge invites students in grades 5 to 8 to create a 1-2 minute video describing a new, innovating solution to solve an everyday problem that directly impacts your family, community, or the global population. Ten finalists will be chosen for their passion for science, spirit of innovation and ingenuity, and effective communication skills.
The top prize winner will receive $25,000 and a once in a lifetime opportunity to attend a taping of a Discovery show “Top Young Scientist.’ Ten finalists will receive $1,000 and a trip to the 3M Innovation Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, to compete in the final competition.
Thousands of students nationwide have participated in the competition and past winners have gone on to do some amazing things, including speaking before Congress and pursuing academic careers in the sciences.
Check out these tips from students for creating great videos. Read some other reasons why students should get involved in this contest.
Meet the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology’s women’s basketball team, which just made the NCAA playoffs for the first time in the school’s history. All 13 players are engineering majors.
That includes #52, Josie Schmidt, shown above in the NCAA opener. She’s a senior in chemical engineering. (The Fightin’ Engineers narrowly lost the opening game to Wheaton and were eliminated.)
While a full court of engineering undergraduates may be unusual, individual students have managed to find success as players and as engineers. Ukari Figgs, who majored in mechanical engineering at Purdue University, rose from the tobacco fields of Georgetown, Ky., to MVP of the 1999 NCAA women’s basketball championship team. Basketball helped pay for college and allowed the 5-foot, 9-inch point guard to travel, including meeting President Clinton in the White House. After graduation, Figgs was drafted by the WNBA and played for five seasons, helping the Los Angeles Sparks win their first championship before joining the University of Kentucky as assistant athletic director for women’s basketball and then returning to her hometown to work as an engineer in Toyota’s auto plant in 2013.
Some engineering hoopsters go pro. Two of the Sportster’stop 20 “smartest” NBA players – free agent Danny Granger, most recently with the Miami Heat, and Butler University grad Gordon Hayward of the Utah Jazz – graduated with degrees in engineering.
Meanwhile, basketball has benefited from the work of engineers in countless ways, from the dimpled ball that is easier to handle and shoot, to high-performance shoes that cushion jumps and precise timers for those buzzer-beater. game-winning throws.
So next time you’re dribbling down the court or teeing up a free shot, thank (or cheer for) an engineer!
Activity from TeachEngineering.org was contributed by Worcester Polytechnic Institute’s Martha Cyr and WEPAN, the Women in Engineering ProActive Network. Click HERE for a high-school-level sneaker design activity that includes engineering career exploration from Discovery Education for Manufacture Your Future.
Summary
Students in upper elementary/early middle school learn about the engineering basics involved in high-performance footwear by following the design process to build prototype sneakers from a variety of materials to meet such design requirements as good traction or deep cushioning. They learn how the sole provides support, cushioning, and traction. There also may be some fashion-based functions, including cool colors or added height.
Grade Level: 5th to 7th gradeTime: 85 minutes, over two days. Part 1, 40 minutes; Part 2, 45 minutes.
Team size: 3 people
Cost: $5
Engineering Connection
Biomedical engineers are involved in the design of sneakers. While it is important for sneakers to look stylish to appeal to consumers, they also must function properly. Many factors must be considered when designing sneakers, such as who will wear them (male, female, child) and the types of activities for which they’ll be used. Those indicate what shoe characteristics are most important for the design, such as traction, cushioning, and height.
Learning Objectives
After this activity, students should be able to:
Analyze a product’s components and function.
Recognize a design need or engineering challenge.
Develop, sketch, and discuss possible solutions and select one.
Select appropriate materials for a design solution.
Construct a working model using a variety of materials.
Use, evaluate and suggest ways to improve a product.
Learning standards
Next Generation Science Standards [Grades 3-5]
Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or a want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost.
Generate and compare multiple possible solutions to a problem based on how well each is likely to meet the criteria and constraints of the problem.
Common Core State Mathematics Standards [Grade 4]
Use the four operations to solve word problems involving distances, intervals of time, liquid volumes, masses of objects, and money, including problems involving simple fractions or decimals, and problems that require expressing measurements given in a larger unit in terms of a smaller unit. Represent measurement quantities using diagrams such as number line diagrams that feature a measurement scale.
International Technology and Engineering Educators Association: Technology [Grades 6-8]
Test and evaluate the design in relation to pre-established requirements, such as criteria and constraints, and refine as needed.
Materials
Each group needs:
An assortment of materials that provide height, cushioning, flexibility and/or traction for shoe prototype construction, such as sponges, bubble wrap packing material, foam, and rubber gloves; see suggestions in Worksheet A: Materials and Properties; feel free to add or substitute items
Sneakers are designed for an assortment of uses. Each application has specific characteristics that must be taken into account before manufacturing. What are your ideas for a sneaker that has never been made before?
Today, you will define specific characteristics for your sneaker, select suitable materials, and create a prototype, just as engineers do.
Vocabulary/Definitions
cushioning: Providing a softening effect to forces.
prototype: A functional early design of a product that is intended for testing.
traction: Ability to slide a load across a surface.
Procedure
Designing today’s sneakers is an engineering science that combines physics, biomechanics, and materials science. The engineering designs take advantage of a wide range materials and creative structural concepts to provide durability, comfort, cushioning, and stability. Good designs also consider the characteristics of various foot types (female, male, child) since each has typical shapes and proportions. For example, women’s feet are usually narrower at the heel, wider at the toe, and with higher arches than men’s feet. The inside layout of a well-designed sneaker takes these physical differences into account. Another important consideration is the activity application. Some sports require shoes with high flexibility, others need maximum cushioning or high traction.
Use Worksheet D: Pattern for Cutting Fabric Base Forms to cut out enough fabric shoe bases to provide two for each student group, plus a few extras in case of mistakes. Note: Each group will construct two matching sneaker prototypes.
As a class, discuss the following: Think about the characteristics of your shoes. What would you like to be different about them? What would it take to create a sneaker with that new property or component? What materials do you know about that could be used?
Divide the class into groups of three or four students each. Give each group Worksheet B: Design Specifications for the Sneaker to complete.
Hand out two copies of Worksheet A: Materials and Properties to each group. Discuss the properties of each material (springy, soft, rigid, sticky, rough, etc.).
Hand out two copies of Worksheet C: Materials and Costs to each group. Costs are assigned to each item. The designed pair of sneakers must be within budget, limiting options and forcing engineering trade-off decisions. [To save paper, write the costs on the whiteboard or make one large poster.]
Distribute two fabric bases plus a bag that includes the materials available for construction of the prototype sneakers. Students can cut or shape materials as desired. Alternatively, set up a “store” at which students can purchase the materials they want by completing and submitting Worksheet C.
Once students select the materials that they feel will work best (meet their design criteria) for their prototype sneakers, have them use glue and tape to assemble the prototypes.
Allow the prototypes time to dry.
Part 2: Evaluating and Improving the Design
Distribute the dry prototypes to the original designers and two lengths of twine for tying on the prototypes.
If time permits, have groups present their designs to the class, explaining what worked well and how they would improve their prototypes. Evaluate each design according to the criteria in #3, below. If time is short, enlist the help of another adult to evaluate half of the groups.
Use the following criteria to evaluate for design success, rating on a 1-3 scale:
Height: Measure the student’s height with and without the sneakers on.
Traction: Slide around the floor with and without the sneakers on.
Cushioning: Jump up and down with and without the sneakers on.
Stiffness: Bend and twist prototype sneakers compared to store-bought sneakers.
If students suggested any additional design criteria, have the group discuss and decide what would be appropriate tests for design success.
Conclude with a class discussion of the following: Compare your sneaker prototypes to some of the sneakers that students are wearing. How do the materials you used compare to the ones in the store-bought sneakers? Are the ideas you have created realistic? What activities are best suited to your designs?
Cover desks and floor surfaces to protect them from glue during construction and testing, or set up a special “test area.”
These sneakers are only prototypes and should not be used for actual wear after the adult-supervised testing.
Investigating Questions
Which material properties help the sneaker be comfortable when you apply strong forces or pressure to your feet? (The greatest comfort comes from materials that are cushioning [soft] and have the ability to “bounce back.”)
Why is traction important on a sneaker? (Traction is created by friction between the base of the sneaker and the ground. Without traction, shoes slip, as if you were trying to move on an icy surface.)
Why do the prices of sneakers vary so much? (Sneaker prices vary because they depend on material costs, marketing costs, manufacturing costs, and supply and demand pressures.)
Assessment
Post-Activity Assessment: Observe class participation in during the discussion about sneaker characteristics.
Activity Embedded Assessment: Evaluate design success during testing. Rate criteria using a 1-3 scale.
Post-Activity Assessment: Assign students to write descriptions of their sneaker designs, explaining the reasons for each feature and what activities they would be best suited for.
Activity Extensions
Have students create a list of other types of footwear. From this list, either discuss the importance of (or create a graph that shows) the same design criteria (height, stiffness, cushioning, traction) for each of these.
Activity Scaling
For younger students, a companion activity – Sneaking Up on Sneakers – has them explore the types of shoes used for different sports.
For upper grades, assign students to research specific materials and combinations of materials that are used to manufacture real sneakers
For grades 9-12, this five class-period version of the shoe design activity from Discovery Education includes the various engineering disciplines involved in shoe design as well as a focus on 3-D computer modeling and the manufacturing process.
References and Additional Resources
Sneakers: From Start to Finish Samuel G. Woods, Gale Zucker (photographer). Book for 3rd to 5th grade readers.
The Engineering Behind Shoe Design. A University of Southern California site that illuminates the engineering of everyday things looks at the materials and design constraints, such as gait, in today’s athletic footwear.
We know how widely each frosty crystal can vary thanks to a Jericho, Vermont, farm boy named Wilson A. Bentley, a.k.a. “Snowflake” Bentley.
Born in 1865, Bentley was fascinated by the natural world as a boy, keeping daily records of the weather and studying butterflies. But snowflakes were his passion. At age 15, he received a microscope for his birthday. He figured out how to adapt it to a camera, engineering an instrument to examine and capture each flake on film. After much trial and error, in 1885 became the first person to photograph a single snowflake – a pursuit he would continue over the course of four decades, capturing some 5,000 images.
In 1904, Bentley wrote to the Smithsonian’s Secretary about his work. He sent 500 prints in the hope they might be of interest. These images are now part of the Smithsonian Institution Archives. A 1931 book, Snow Crystals, contains more than 2,400 of his snowflake images.
Bentley, who died in Jericho in 1931 after catching pneumonia from walking through a blizzard, shored up the belief that every snowflake is unique and fueled scientific studies along with popular imagination.
When Haiti suffered a devastating earthquake in January 2010, professors and students at the University of Notre Dame’s engineering school wondered how to help. Visiting civil engineers had taken tens of thousands of pictures to inform the restoration and rebuilding efforts, but there were far more images than could be examined. Could lay volunteers help classify the structural damage and find shelter for an estimated 1.3 million people left homeless by the disaster?
A team of computer science, civil and electrical engineering, and sociology researchers decided to find out. They built an online photo-tagging platform and recruited 242 students to classify the location and severity of the damage of structures in 400-photo batches. A data-mining algorithm then pulled together “highly trustworthy results” from these surrogate civil engineers. (Read their 2012 research paper. Click HERE to participate in the survey.)
Team member Tracy Kijewski-Correa, a civil engineering professor, and two of her colleagues launched an initiative called Engineering2Empower (E2E) to assess the needs of Haitian communities and partner with local entrepreneurs to erect low-cost, permanent housing. The E2E basic design uses a steel-reinforced concrete frame to handle seismic force, with walls of prefab concrete and steel mesh panels. Metal grills can be installed over doors, windows, and porch for security. The group worked with citizens and leaders of the decimated city of Léogâne to develop plans to rebuild the city’s water and housing systems.
Photo by Ann Foster, Florida, 2016 GBBC
Such efforts represent engineering’s early forays into the time-honored tradition of “citizen science,” a crowd-sourcing approach that recruits volunteers of all ages to help collect data, classify images, and observe phenomena from birds to stars to weather. Since 1998, for example, Cornell University’s Ornithology Lab and the National Audubon Society, for example, has hosted an annual Great Backyard Bird Count – this year’s count takes place February 17-20, 2017. What began as an experiment has grown to a vast observatory, in which more than 160,000 individuals in 100 countries submitted reports last year on 5,689 different birds, about half the world’s known species, painting a picture of complex migratory and population patterns that would be impossible for small groups of scientists to collect or analyze.
The federal government hosts a number of citizen science projects. In Fairbanks, Alaska, for instance, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service enlisted local grade school students to trap and measure Chena River Chinook Salmon minnows and other fish every week throughout the summer in 2011 to gauge the health of the fish population.
Engineers support citizen science in a number of important ways, particularly designing Web-based systems and other technologies that enable people to review and report data. For example, underwater autonomous vehicles like the one designed by University of Florida students for a Navy competition (image, right) now enable scores of landlubbers to monitor coral bleaching and sealife. NYU-Poly students created a crowd-sourced project to monitor pollution in the Gowanus River using robotic boats. And NASA recently unveiled an app to help students and teachers more easily observe and report clouds and other environmental phenomena in the GLOBE program. Of course, there’s plenty of clipboard-style investigations, such as the BioBlitz that brought 500 sophomores from the City University of New York to scour the shores of Manhattan’s filthy East River for insects, plants, and other living creatures.
Citizen scientists and engineers don’t just help scientists collect data via the Internet. They are community advocates and activists. The lead-laced drinking water in Flint, Michigan, was initially uncovered by a local mom who enlisted the assistance of a local Environmental Protection Agency official and Virginia Tech engineering professor Mark Edwards, who paid for lead testing kits out of his own pocket. (See ASEE Prism magazine’s March 2016 cover story.) Their Flint Water Study blog continues to keep residents informed of lead test results and other information. In the 1970s, residents of Bumpass Cove, Tenn., collected data and conducted research in their community that exposed the illegal dumping of hazardous wastes which had polluted local rivers. Their findings forced the state to take action. As the cleanup progressed, these citizen scientists became citizen engineers as they helped inform the design of the environmental remediation process.
Some technologies have the potential to shift paradigms by opening up the engineering design process to policy leaders, students, and other amateurs. Notre Dame’s Structural Dynamics and Monitoring Lab, known as DYNAMO, has created a cyber-platform that allows citizen engineers to collaborate in designing structures and assessing and mitigating hurricane damage.
While there is interest among engineering educators in developing similar cadres of citizen engineers, initial attempts suggest it may be a harder sell than weather bugs or bird watchers. In a paper presented at ASEE’s 2016 annual conference, researchers from Virginia Tech and Old Dominion University describe the results of a pilot course designed to introduce non-engineers to engineering using the citizen engineering model. They found that students struggled in particular “with the central argument of the course that engineering ought to be democratized, that non-engineers can make crucial contributions.”
Photo of UAV RoboSub 2013 courtesy of the U.S. Navy
Photo (above) of Virginia Tech students and scientists involved in testing Flint, Michigan’s tap water for lead from the Flint Water Study.
Cover photo of 2010 earthquake damage in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, courtesy of Wikicommons, Photo taken by USAF Master Sgt. Jeremy Lock.
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Born in 1865, Bentley was fascinated by the natural world as a boy, keeping daily records of the weather and studying butterflies. But snowflakes were his passion. At age 15, he received a microscope for his birthday. He figured out how to adapt it to a camera, engineering an instrument to examine and capture each flake on film. After much trial and error, in 1885 became the first person to photograph a single snowflake – a pursuit he would continue over the course of four decades, capturing some 5,000 images.
Engineers support citizen science in a number of important ways, particularly designing Web-based systems and other technologies that enable people to review and report data. For example, 
