We see the sun every day, but have you ever tried to directly capture and use the energy it provides? By building simple solar ovens using pizza boxes, black construction paper, foil, and plastic wrap, our students were able to learn about important energy concepts like “reflection” and “absorption” while […]
Yearly Archives: 2017
How do our eyes and brains work together to form images? How can we see colors? Can we trust everything our eyes see? Can we create optical illusions? Can we construct a model of the eye that produces an image? These were some of the questions we explored in our recent […]
Earlier in the year, our elementary school CSW classes learned about the structure of human hands by building working models showing bones, muscles, tendons, and ligaments. In April, our middle- and high-school classes explored this topic by dissecting actual chicken feet. In addition to learning basic dissection techniques and […]
Gravity is the force that makes things fall to the ground, but what allows some things to fly or float? Why does a piece of paper float lazily to the ground, while the same piece will drop straight down if it’s crumpled into a ball? Birds, kites, and pieces […]
Understanding acids, bases, and their interaction is fundamental to the study of chemistry. In this session, students at VMHS used a home-made pH indicator solution (red cabbage juice) to test and identify the acidity level of common things like ammonia, vinegar, laundry detergent, juices, milk, and Coke. After using their […]
Can you build a bridge out of newspaper? Our students were challenged to design a bridge using only newspaper and tape and then test their creations by seeing how much weight it could hold. Did it collapse? That’s OK — just back to the drawing board to make improvements […]
At Vicente Martinez High School, we presented several engineering challenges that allows students to solve problems and create solutions. In the first session we asked our students to create a “Marble Wall” — a vertical maze that uses gravity and inertia to move marbles from the start to the end. […]
Understanding the complexity of something as simple as wiggling our fingers is an important step in learning about human biology and anatomy. With all of the bones, muscles, ligaments, and tendons, our hands are incredibly interesting. In one of our our recent Community Science Workshop sessions we made models of […]