December 2012 Archives

While "Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day" is officially celebrated in February, helping girls understand the creative world of engineering is important all year long. If you love to innovate, imagine, build, tinker, solve problems, or make things, engineering might be just the right area for you—or your student!

Do you like chocolate chip cookies? Maybe you make yours using a treasured family recipe, or, like many other people, maybe you use the recipe on the back of the bag of chocolate chips to make "Toll House Cookies." Chocolate chip cookies are a familiar dessert in many households and, arguably, an ingrained part of our culture, but this favorite kind of cookie is really less than a hundred years old!

Chocolate chip cookies are the result of innovation by Ruth Wakefield, one of the proprietors of the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts. In a hurry one day, legend has it that Ruth cut a few corners to save time while making a batch of chocolate butter drop cookies. Ruth mixed chunks of chocolate into the dough rather than using melted chocolate. The chunks did not completely melt during baking. With that first batch, Ruth spawned a cookie that would delight cookie and chocolate fans of all ages and would lead to Nestlé's development and production of chocolate chips. It's a story worth thinking about the next time you look at your favorite recipe and wonder what would happen if you changed things, tried something different, or otherwise altered your tried and true formula!

Ruth's story highlights ingenuity. She wasn't really looking to invent a completely new kind of cookie. Instead, she was looking for a better (and faster) approach. Once she tasted the results and saw the reaction of her customers to the cookie, she knew she had created something special. Nestlé knew it, too. In the end, Ruth wound up with a lifetime's supply of chocolate, and her recipe lives on with each package of Nestle chocolate chips.

The historical genesis of the chocolate chip cookie is interesting. You might have picked up bits and pieces of Ruth's story from your chocolate chips bag. But what about the origin of windshield wipers? Kevlar®? Liquid Paper®? Scotchguard^TM? Paper bags? The computer compiler? Behind each of these discoveries and inventions is the story of a female engineer, scientist, or inventor.

A History of Innovation and Invention by Women

Girls Think of Everything: Stories of Ingenious Inventions by Women,
by Catherine Thimmesh, offers these stories, and many others, for readers of all ages. Chances are good that some of these stories of innovation and invention are ones you have not heard. You may know the product, but you may not know of the woman behind it or "how" the invention came about. Girls Think of Everything does an excellent job spinning tales that are fun to read, offer plenty of wow factor, and combine to paint a powerful and inspiring portrait of women in engineering. What do you think of when you think of an engineer? Girls Think of Everything may challenge your definition of engineers and engineering in a good way!

Some of the discoveries chronicled in Girls Think of Everything started with an accident; others were the result of determined research and development. Some of these inventions were by women working in labs; others were created by women out of necessity or from home. The book, illustrated by Melissa Sweet with engaging illustrations and collages that reinforce the subject matter of each story, invites readers to learn more about women who have made important contributions as inventors, engineers, and scientists. In pages at the front and back of the book, a timeline chronicles inventions and discoveries by women between 3000 B.C. and 1995. It's an impressive look at the role of female innovators, and the book, as a whole, is a wonderful collection for young women. Reading these stories is sure to amaze, inspire, and maybe even propel a future engineer to grab a laboratory notebook and put the steps of the engineering design process in action!

Educating and Supporting Tomorrow's Engineers

Engineers Week, a project of the National Engineers Foundation, and sponsored by companies like Motorola Solutions Foundation, Lockheed Martin, and Northrup Grumman, will take place February 17-23, 2013. A collaborative effort, the week encourages the education of students about engineering as a step toward increasing the number of students pursuing engineering degrees. Through community and school activities during this special week, students learn more about engineering and the many kinds of career opportunities that exist. The more models of female scientists and engineers we can provide for students during elementary and middle school, the more young women we can help encourage to explore paths in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields. (Note: On the Engineers Week website, teachers can request free kits containing posters, suggested activities, and more, to help promote the week at school.)

Encouraging Female Engineers

February 21, 2013 is "Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day." The day is an important part of Engineers Week, but the core concept behind introducing young women to engineering transcends the single day and has become an important cause, year-round, for organizations like Motorola Solutions Foundation. Raising awareness among young women about engineering as a creative, innovative, and collaborative field of study and encouraging and nurturing girls' interest in engineering is important every day, all year long.

The next time you use your windshield wipers on a rainy day, give a thought to Mary Anderson. If you don't know her story, check out Girls Think of Everything. Mary's story is one of many to share with students and family members.

For even more inspiration, watch the "Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day" video, created by the National Engineers Foundation.

The Science Buddies staff shares their wish lists from the Science Buddies store. See what science and engineering kits they would most like to open up and give a hands-on try!

Each year, I poll the Science Buddies staff about something related to science, engineering, or technology that might be on their wish lists. The team at Science Buddies that supports our more than 15,000 pages of free, scientist-authored, K-12 science and engineering Project Ideas and resources is small, but the collective answers each year underscore what an interesting and diverse group we are!

This year, with the advent of the Science Buddies Store offering new convenience and ease of access to the right materials to use with one of our science or engineering Project Ideas, I asked the staff which kit they would most like to explore, individually or as a science exploration with their families. With over 50 kits available, their selections highlight only a few of our science project kits! Here are some of the ones our staff chose:

Which one stands out for you? Browse the science project kits in the Science Buddies Store, and let us know which kit you would most want to have—and why!

Two students in LA took an audible cue from the community for their fourth-grade science project and designed a sound-based video game. Their first video game design project gave them an inside look into how games are designed, built, and tested to meet the needs of various audiences.

Using video games as an educational tool, especially in areas of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), is becoming increasingly common in the classroom. At the same time, an increasing number of students are exploring video game design as part of their science and engineering projects. Propelled by support from companies like AMD, E-Line Media, and with showcase events like the National STEM Video Game Challenge and the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards (which includes video game categories), students are finding increased support and validation for projects that help them catapult interest in games into scientific exploration.

There are countless angles for possible student exploration, and Science Buddies Video & Computer Games area offers a wide range of Project Ideas that encourage students to test, create, or experiment with video game design and technology.

Meeting Students on Familiar Ground

When Zach Weiss and Talia Glazer, fourth grade students at Brawerman Elementary School, discovered the "Creating a Video Game for the Blind" Project Idea after using the Topic Selection Wizard, they found a project that combined their interest in technology with their desire to help others. The Project Idea sparked their curiosity in terms of learning how to create a video game, but it also got them thinking about the video games they play. Can those same games be played by everyone? Do visually impaired students also play video games? Can games be created that are similarly fun for all audiences? For two fourth-grade students with no experience designing a video game, deciding to see what it takes to create a game that works for vision-impaired or blind players may sound ambitious, but Zach and Talia were up to the challenge.

With the support of their science teacher, who encouraged her students to investigate the implications of their projects beyond the walls of the classroom, Zach and Talia met with a group of teenagers at a local center for the blind. The team quickly learned that, like many other teens, students at the Center enjoy video games. Unfortunately, many games cannot be fully enjoyed (or won) if you can't "see" the game. The teens Zach and Talia met game them plenty of information about the kinds of features that are important in a game that can be played by blind gamers. "We asked them what elements they thought video games needed," says Zach. "They said lots of sound elements, commands, and cues, so we decided to create a video game with all of these elements."

Following the steps of the Engineering Design Process, Zach and Talia outlined their goals, brainstormed possible game types and storyboards, and evaluated game creation environments. After considering many options, they decided to create a game in the tradition of the classic two-paddle Pong. Though the team chose a vintage game as a conceptual framework, Zach and Talia planned to give their version a major update, one that would tip the scales in terms of sound cues and would not require sight to play. Using the "Creating a Video Game for the Blind" Project Idea and GameMaker Lite, they began developing Blong.

Designing Blong

Zach admits there was a learning curve to working with GameMaker. But the more they tested, tweaked, and retested their game during development, the easier they found the design and programming process. In the end, the two had a great time working together, exchanging ideas, and building a game that met their objectives.

"Our video game has tons of sound elements," says Zach. "For example, when the paddle 'bumps' into the top or bottom wall, the player hears a 'bump' sound." Cues like these, and other sound elements that signal certain actions or events, help orient the player both in terms of the game mechanisms and the game play. In addition to boosting the game's sound-based environment, Zach and Talia also paid careful attention to the speed of the game and the visual contrast of the game, elements of game design the teens they met told them can make or break the playability of a game for visually impaired players.

Testing Blong

Playtesting a game in development is often one of the most fun aspects of a game design project. For Zach and Talia, playtesting was critical, says Zach, but to accurately evaluate how the development was going, they had to continually put themselves in the position of their target audience. After all, they were not creating just a video game. They were making a game that can be successfully played entirely based on the game's sound cues. "We tested the game with our eyes closed in order to adjust the speed of the ball and paddle and to determine the types and amounts of sounds cues to use," says Zach. In addition to testing for playability, Zach and Talia also got a firsthand look at the rigorous levels of testing and troubleshooting that often go into game design and computer programming projects. "We tested each feature of the game throughout development," says Zach, "to make sure that it still worked, to determine if any of the newly added features conflicted with the earlier features, and to debug the errors that we found."

Creating Blong was challenging for the team, but the satisfaction of having made their own game scored big with the team in the end. "The best part of the science project," says Zach, "was programming the Blong video game that my partner and I developed!"

Science Projects Spark Lasting Interest

Zach loves to read, play video games, and participate in school sports and extracurricular activities like the Green Committee, school newspaper, choir, and orchestra. He was already interested in technology at the outset of his science project, but his experience with Blong cemented both his interest in pursuing a high-tech career and his enthusiasm for science fairs. "Creating a video game for the blind was an amazing experience," says Zach, attributing part of the reward to the community service aspect that gave his and Talia's project real-world significance.

Already Zach has continued to expand his knowledge of video game design and took a summer class to learn about using another popular game design creation tool. Blong may have been his and Talia's first science fair project and the first video game they designed, but we hope there are many games yet to be created in their future!

When it comes to customizing robots, the spirit of innovation is alive and well in afterschool programs around the country. Extracurricular engineering and robotics clubs may provide a welcome outlet and important mentoring for students. From brainstorming designs to nuts and bolts building to learning how to integrate servo motors and computer programming, robotics projects capitalize on a student's love of tinkering—with the possibility of a clear reward in the end, a bot that does what you want it to do. A new trio of Science Buddies robotics engineering Projects Ideas offer students blueprints for hands-on exploration. Whether it is a student's first robot or merely the next, these projects offer independent challenge for at-home innovation or for a science and engineering design project assignment.

Depending on the ages of your children or students, you may find yourself at one of a myriad of points on an important parental continuum—that of encouraging and supporting the engineering spirit. From the time a student can first hold a chunky plastic block and connect it with another block, either flush or staggered, many parents nudge, challenge, and inspire their children to build, connect, modify, and, ultimately, to innovate. In many households, first experiences with building bricks evolve into experiences with increasingly smaller and more varied bricks, and the possibility broadens to encompass remote-controlled toys, circuit and electronics kits, and a host of other mechanical toy and DIY kit options. The parental quest? Nurture, feed, and inspire innovation.

Engineering Steps

When an elementary school student watches a mechanical bot crawl across the table and notices that if she presses and holds both of the micro-controller buttons at once, the insect will crawl in a circle rather than in straight lines, what happens next? Maybe she experiments with each button separately. Maybe she evaluates the difference in the bot's speed based on how she uses the buttons. Maybe she sees the circular shape of the bot's movement and realizes it could potentially draw a circle.

The insect doesn't really have anything to do with drawing or markers. It's just a tiny bug version of a classic remote-controlled toy car. It is an upgrade over last year's bug, however. That one just had an on and off switch. Once on, it moved without stopping. This model has given her control over the movement. In testing that control, she's made a hypothetical leap. When the student sees the circle and makes a connection to something else that can be done by combining the bug's motions and another implement (a marker), there is magic. Testing her idea by wedging a marker through the bug's appendages and setting it loose on top of a piece of paper may, in fact, generate a circle. If it takes several tries to find the right angle at which to position the marker, or just how far you need to stick it through the bug's legs, that's part of the process. Similarly, pens and markers of different weights may work differently&mddash;or may not work at all. The bug is small and lightweight. That has an impact on what kind of marking instrument the bug can drag along in its circuitous path. But, finally, there is a circle. A circle that a small bug robot has drawn.

In this case, the ability to control the drawing process is limited. But for many parents and teachers, the simple "aha" moment, and the satisfaction of seeing the circle on the page, is an important part of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education. To feed this kind of excitement about engineering, robotics clubs and groups are springing up in an increasing number of schools and after-school programs, often with the support of companies like Motorola Solutions Foundation. Many of these groups work with VEX robotics kits. Part screw-it-together, part brainstorm and modify, part hacker DIY, part programming, and part collaboration with peers and clusters of parents, teachers, and role models, VEX systems can be a fulcrum for middle and high school robotics exploration.

For the Game of It

This year, student robotics teams planning to participate in VEX competitions are preparing for the VEX Sack Attack. To succeed in the Sack Attack challenge, teams will have to design and build a bot that can quickly and efficiently scoop up "sacks" and deposit them in a scoring area to earn more points for the team than the bot on the other side of the 12' x 12' arena within a set amount of time. Different colored sacks earn different points, and there are multiple types of goals, each worth different point values. In preparation for an official bot versus bot Sack Attack showdown, robotics team members often meet in the afternoons and on weekends. Many teams, especially at the middle school level, first assemble a baseline or "kit" sack attack bot. The "kit" bot is functional, but as groups test and observe their bots abilities, they are encouraged to think about ways to enhance the bot's ability to quickly and efficiently perform its task. Following steps of the Engineering Design Process, students collaborate customizing their robot and prototyping and testing new features, behaviors, and programming. What modifications might make the bot easier to maneuver or better able to pick up and deposit sacks? What custom behaviors might give their bot an edge?

Building Bots

Using core VEX components and extrapolating from robotics club investigations, students can independently design and test custom bots built to perform a range of different tasks. An exciting new trio of Science Buddies Project Ideas challenges students to use a VEX kit to create a marker-wielding robot, one that can draw a picture. The tiered suite of projects begins with "Robot Picasso: Building a Robot That Creates Art." In this robotics Project Idea, students are guided in thinking through ways to turn the Vex claw bot into a picture-drawing robot. While basic guidelines for assembly are given, students will need to innovate and troubleshoot their own drawings and designs to construct their drawing bot. At the same time, students will face the limitations of their bot as they test to determine what it can and can't successfully draw—and why.

With the basic "Robot Picasso" drawing bot on hand, a young engineer can tackle more sophisticated challenges to give the bot more refinement and the ability to use more than one color or other tools. The "Motorized Michelangelo: Building an Art Robot with Servo Motors *" Abbreviated Project Idea encourages students to incorporate a servo motor in the robot, allowing greater control. This robot, for example, can be programmed to lift the marker at a certain point rather than drawing a continuous and never-ending line. The "Drawing Dalibot: Designing an Art Robot That Switches Colors *" Abbreviated Project Idea challenges the student to extend the exploration and enable the bot to use more than one color. Controlling how multiple colors are used, selected, and changed offers a fun and sophisticated robotics engineering project that requires the use of servo motors and programming using RobotC.

These three Project Ideas are just the beginning. We encourage students to adapt the core project concepts to further refine the art bot or to create an entirely new kind of robot that builds upon behaviors and functionality from the art bot! Before your students disassemble and start something new, send Science Buddies a picture. We would love to see what your students imagine, innovate, and build!