March 2013 Archives

When it comes to structural engineering, there is a lot to be learned from the shape of the mighty egg. At the same time, sitting on an egg doesn't always work out so well. From eggs to domes to bridges, there is family science at hand perfect for spring break exploration for young builders and engineers! Be prepared to be slimed by some breakages and dazzled by some shows of surprising strength!

There are chickens at my son's elementary school, and it is great to see kids running to the coop in the afternoons to interact with the chickens, to help with coop duties, and, to check for eggs. With only a few chickens and a few eggs relative to the number of interested chicken watchers, there are some basic school coop rules about gathering the eggs. But when you are the only student around in the afternoon, and you find an egg, you may find that you just got lucky. My student stopped by the coop one afternoon last week and was excited to find an egg that had not yet been collected. It was, indeed, fresh from the chicken, and he insisted I feel how warm it was to the touch—warm and smooth and perfectly ovoid in shape.

Unfortunately, in addition to being warm and smooth, eggs are also fragile. Elementary school students know this. Most of them have had plenty of experience cracking eggs in school and home kitchen science and baking projects. But despite what they "know"—that eggs crack—sometimes maybe there is an irrepressible need to goof around with an egg. Maybe that need is especially strong when you've just gathered it, warm and smooth. But when you joke around and pretend to sit on the egg as the chicken must have, chances are good you will end up with a pile of gelatinous goo, even if you are not really trying to sit with all of your weight, even if, really, you are just being silly.

That is what happened to us, and egghead excitement quickly turned to nine-year-old despair. A broken egg isn't nearly as much fun, and the chickens didn't care that his egg had cracked. The chicken was done for the day. There wasn't another egg ready and waiting to be found. These are sometimes hard lessons that go along with chicken care, egg gathering, and any kind of hands-on science.

Unexpected Connections

The incident with the egg was a reminder to us that eggs are fragile. We crack them to break them open when we want to cook or eat them. While looking at science project ideas in preparation for this week's focus on Easter and family and class egg boiling and dyeing activities, I ran across the "Fallen Arches: The Surprising Strength of Eggshells" materials science Project Idea.

As the title suggests, the project is all about the strength of the egg shape or, more specifically, of half an egg—an arch. This is a fun hands-on engineering experiment for even the youngest of student scientists. With three half eggs, sitting point-side up and arranged in an evenly-distributed triangle, how much weight will they hold before caving? You and your young scientists might be surprised!

If you keep a few eggs aside when you boil others for dyeing, you can engage your students with a great hands-on science activity that easily feeds into other questions and experiments about structures and building designs. As you and your students talk about arches as a structural element, you may find that there are examples in your neighborhood that can add even more relevance to your exploration and your student's understanding of arches in the real world. A small stone bridge walkway that crosses a favorite duck pond of ours is built using arch shapes. An arch bridge is a classic bridge design, in fact. (To extend your discussion, look up keystones!)

From Eggs to Engineering

The following hands-on engineering projects can easily be turned into fun family science activities, great for spring break, summer vacation, or a rainy day. Many of these projects involve some combination of physics, structural engineering, materials science, and math, which gives them great range and versatility. A lot depends on what questions you and your kids want to ask and explore. Why, after all, are the half eggshells arranged in a triangle in the "Fallen Arches" project?

That you can spend an afternoon assembling straws or rolls of newspaper and wind up with an awesome three-dimensional object worthy of display gives these projects added pizzazz for families that love DIY projects and the art that evolves from hands-on exploration. On the flip side, there are structural engineering projects where the goal is to build them so that you can break them. For some kids and families, that is exactly the ticket for thrilling science!

Check the following Project Ideas for more suggestions for families that love to build:

• "Dome Sweet Dome": build a geodesic dome using struts made from rolled-up newspaper. (You can do a similar activity with straws.)
• "Building the Tallest Tower": great for the younger crowd as long as no one gets upset when the tower tumbles!
• "The Effect of Bridge Design on Weight Bearing Capacity": test two different bridge designs, a Warren truss bridge from Popsicle sticks and a Howe truss bridge made from straws. This is a build and break project, so be prepared!
• "Can a Toilet Paper Tube Support Your Weight? *": how big would a tube need to be for you to stand on it without it caving in? How does the answer change if you fill the tube with various materials?
• "Newspaper Tower *": how tall of a tower can you build with two sheets of paper—and nothing else? What shape will it take to reach the greatest height and to maximize the paper and to make it stand?
• "Paper Bridge for Pennies *": a bridge made out of one sheet of paper, a few paper clips, and the challenge to have it support 100 pennies? Let your engineers loose and see what creative solutions they devise!

Cracking Family Science

In the end, eggs do break easily when force is applied from a certain direction. But held or positioned differently, an egg can withstand more pressure than you might expect. Put eggs—and other building designs—to the test with your kids, and let us know what you discover and what fun you have doing science together!

Follow along all week as we highlight great picks for keeping the kids busy with hands-on science during spring break.

Carefully-selected projects and science activities can be fun and engrossing, and we have plenty of ideas for cool science explorations that take minimal preparation, use easy-to-find materials, and are engaging for a range of ages. (See our initial "Finding the Science in Spring Break" post on Spring Break science.)

Top Picks for Spring Break Science

We are adding to this list all week long, so stay tuned! The full list is shown below:

• Skipping Science: An Experiment in Jump Rope Lengths: When it comes to jump ropes, one size may not fit all! If you want to score high jump numbers, what is the perfect jump rope length for you? Get hands-on and find out!
• Motion Mania: Applying Physics to Hula-Hooping: Hula-hooping is fun but not necessarily as easy as it might look! The size and weight of your hula hoop may have a lot to do with your success as a hula hooper. In this hands-on, backyard science project, kids can build their own hula hoops from tubing and investigate to find out how the size and weight matter. Don't forget the duct tape for personalizing your hoop!
• Make Monkeys Fly in the Blink of an Eye: With a screaming monkey (or another toy that can be launched from a rubber band) on hand, kids can explore the relationship between the stretch of the rubber band and the distance the monkey flies. What's going on? It's all about energy! Take some pictures. We want to see your monkeys fly!
• Rocketology: Baking Soda + Vinegar = Lift Off: You may have to dig to find a few old film canisters, but when you mix in a few kitchen ingredients, a plastic film canister can lead to explosive fun with chemical reactions. Kick up the classic volcano experiment as you launch mini rockets and figure out the best ratio of ingredients to get the highest flight. Remember: safety goggles, adult supervision, and a clear outdoor place where the mess won't matter!
• Turn Milk into Plastic!: Milk! Good for the body and, with the right chemical reaction, good for a hands-on creative activity. Experiment with the recipe for making milk-based plastic, and then use the plastic you make to create beads or small sculptures. This is a fun chemistry activity for kitchen scientists. What will you make with your milk plastic?
• Bottled-up Buoyancy: What makes a submarine sink or rise? In this hands-on hydrodynamics exploration, students build a model submarine from empty plastic bottles and then experiment with buoyancy by changing the amount of water "in" the submarine and seeing what happens. With a rubber-band propelled launch mechanism and a working propeller, this #science activity is lots of fun!
• Shaking Up Some Energy: create your own "shake it up" alternative energy, a la a "shake to light" flashlight, by making a simple generator and investigating the relationship between magnetism and the induction of electrical current. Wrapping 1,000-2,000 turns of wire around a plastic film canister will keep your tinkerer busy in this hands-on electronics project. But in the end, she will have a working example of battery-free power!

How did you fill spring break days? We would love to hear what science activities you did with your family. Snap and share your photos to put your family's science in the spotlight! (Email us at blog@sciencebuddies.org.)

If spring break is on the calendar, take advantage of the week to tackle some hands-on family science or set the kids up with STEM projects that offer a fun challenge and some focused exploration.

This week is spring break in my house. Maybe it is in your house as well, or will be in a few weeks. The kids may be psyched to be home, but spring break often requires a bit of juggling for parents. As you plan how to balance the days, don't overlook science activities as a way to connect as a family in ways the kids will enjoy and you can feel good about.

Doing family science at home doesn't have to feel like reproducing a classroom lesson. There is no final exam and no research paper required, so relax and have fun with the process. It's okay to get messy and make mistakes! There are lots of options for family science that may tie in with angles of inquiry you and your kids already enjoy, that relate to a current area of interest, or that bridge the gap between art project and science experiment. The key is to find a project that sounds fun—for everyone.

Planning Family Science

After thinking through science, math, engineering, and technology projects that we might tackle this spring break in my house, I placed an order for some inexpensive supplies with an ambitious and creative hands-on math project in mind. In the week or so leading up to spring break, I tried to seed some anticipation and get the kids excited about what we will be doing. We talked about the general concept of the project, about the options we have for size and construction, about some real-world applications of the idea I've seen, and about the cool math at hand.

I have a few science activities planned for the kids this week, but this one is the biggest, and I selected it because it nicely spans their ages, fits with their interests, is entirely hands-on, will require focused involvement and time preparing our materials, and will be fun! Plus, in the end, we're going to end up with a giant "thing" as the result of our cooperative and collaborative math exploration. That I have tied in duct tape as part of the DIY activity will only add to the appeal of the process and of the product! I will be photographing our experience to share it here on the blog, so stay tuned!

Top Picks for Spring Break Science

We will be highlighting some great spring break science ideas all week at Science Buddies and, especially, at Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Join us in one of those places to follow along! Many of these activities use everyday or easy-to-find materials, so once you and your kids decide on an experiment or science project to do, it can be easy to gather supplies for a great hands-on family science exploration.

To kick off our spring break science celebration, here are a few of our top picks to get you started thinking about ways to infuse spring break with hands-on science. Both of these science explorations blend craft and science and burn off some energy at the same time!

• Skipping Science: An Experiment in Jump Rope Lengths: When it comes to jump ropes, one size may not fit all! If you want to score high jump numbers, what is the perfect jump rope length for you? Get hands-on and find out!




• Motion Mania: Applying Physics to Hula-Hooping: Hula-hooping is fun but not necessarily as easy as it might look! The size and weight of your hula hoop may have a lot to do with your success as a hula hooper. In this hands-on, backyard science project, kids can build their own hula hoops from tubing and investigate to find out how the size and weight matter. Don't forget the duct tape for personalizing your hoop!

We will be adding to our list of spring break science picks all week! We would love to hear what you try with your family. Snap and share your photos to put your family's science in the spotlight! (Email us at blog@sciencebuddies.org.)

Egg science is fun at any time, but if you and your kids are planning to boil and dye eggs this week, don't miss out on the great opportunities for fun, colorful, and possibly smelly, family science!

In the years that I have worked at Science Buddies, the tradition of dyeing Easter eggs has taken on new meaning and significance. Instead of simply being a requisite family craft activity, Easter egg preparations have become a conduit for a spring-themed boost of hands-on science with the kids. Really, in my house, the plastic eggs are where it's at. The plastic eggs are the ones that are hidden, found, and might be filled with something of sweet value. The real eggs are the ones decorated and then ushered to the climate-controlled sanctity of the fridge.

Our real eggs are pro forma, but we still dye a dozen or so each Easter just because, so we might as well make use of the opportunity to investigate what's going on with those shells, both inside and out.

Egg Science in Years Past

Our exploration of Easter eggs in the last few years has focused both on the boiling process and on the dyeing process, and we have learned a lot through trial and error and through comparing different approaches to each step. Particularly notable was the realization that hard boiled eggs really are not supposed to be grossly green on the inside! (I've been boiling eggs the way my grandmother taught me all my life!) But our heightened attention to the science at hand also led to interesting questions about pH levels and types of vinegar, and last year, we made our first attempt at using natural dyes.

That process, in and of itself, was beautiful and much more exciting than using the little plastic egg-shaped containers and grocery store dyeing tablets. Our series of mason jars filled with a rainbow of natural dye baths was stunning. If the eggs had turned out as vibrant as the waters themselves, the process would have been a home run for both kids and mom. Unfortunately, the final egg shades didn't live up to the colors at which their water jars hinted, and some colors (and ingredients) were more successful than others. Even so, the hands-on activity was fun, inspired lots of predictions from the kids, and gave us plenty of room to talk about how we might modify the process and our ingredients to enhance our results another year. Plus, in addition to the smell of hard boiled eggs in the air, we added a layer of boiled cabbage!

Bunny Steps with Egg Science

To get you in an egg-ready mood, read through my accounts of our previous explorations. My bunny-hop trail through the land of egg boiling and dyeing is, by and large, a cautionary tale of family science, but our experience might help you hone in on an angle of scientific inquiry to guide your family's egg-based activities this year:

• "Hard-Boiled Science: "I thought that sickly green layer to the yolk was simply... a fact of a hard-boiled egg. It's not!"
• "Putting Your Eggs All in One (Dye) Basket": "Underwhelmed by the sticker and glitter-approach to decorating eggs lining the shelves, I thought of the subtle tones of eggs dyed with natural ingredients and decided we should try it."

There are plenty of "egg"-centric projects at Science Buddies that you can modify for a home-based science activity with your kids. Even without an extra dozen eggs on hand for testing, these science project ideas can fuel family dinner discussions in preparation for Easter:

• "Egg-cellently Cooked Eggs: The Process of Soft-Boiling an Egg": Use the time suggestions in the procedure to create your own informal egg boiling experiment.
• "How Does a Chick Breathe Inside Its Shell?": A chicken egg shell has thousands of pores. What do these pores do? Check out the diagram to learn more about the anatomy of an egg and then investigate by weighing eggs before and after boiling.
• "Eggs and Hen's Diet: Can You Get Bigger Eggs for Peanuts?": What do chickens eat? What makes one chicken feed more nutritious than another? What nutritional value do eggs offer us and what is the relationship between the egg and what the chicken eats? If you tend chickens at home or at your school, experiment with the relationship between the size of the eggs laid and the amount of protein in the chicken feed.

It's the Doing that Counts!

Any of these explorations can be easily adapted as a fun science activity for parents with kids in the house or even for classroom exploration. For families, if you will be dyeing eggs the weekend before Easter, plan ahead and make a bit of extra time to experiment with your family's boiling or dyeing process and to talk about why your results will differ if you change one of your variables. Get a scratch notebook out and assign one of your young scientists the task of recording your experiment. Give another a camera to document the process! How many eggs are you starting with? What color are the eggs? How many eggs are you adding to the pot at once? When are you adding the eggs? How many minutes will you boil the water with the heat on? How long will the eggs sit in the water after you turn it off? Do you use a lid? How will you cool the eggs? And then, what will you do with the second batch? Remember, to compare your results and test a hypothesis, you want to change only one variable at a time!

Any of these questions can be turned into a science activity with your kids. You can come up with a list of questions related to the dyeing process, too! Pick one question that sounds fun, and turn your yearly Easter egg dyeing into a family science activity. You don't have to compare everything. Just pick something that you all agree sounds interesting and makes you "wonder." Talk about it: What do you already know about the dyeing process? What questions do you have?

Designer Dye Baths

If you are looking for something really different and looking to get as far from a "box" craft as you can, the solution may be tucked away in your closet (or found at a local thrift store). The new "Dye Eggs Using Silk Ties for Egg-cellent Colors" chemistry Project Idea explores the science behind a DIY dye approach popular in home and garden and craft magazines. You can create your own "tie"-dyed eggs worthy of Martha Stewart using silk ties. (This is not your rubber-band t-shirt tie dye!)

Following any ready-made directions for using silk ties to dye eggs, you can create an array of eggs sporting novel patterns and designs. But what's the key? What's the science behind the process? We've got a science procedure that lets students ask science questions and put the process to a scientific test! (For a family-friendly spin of the tie-dyed eggs experiment, see the version we posted at Scienctific American.)

Better understanding how the process works and what really makes the colors and patterns transfer best involves some hands-on testing. Be forewarned! To ensure you are only changing one variable in the testing, this science project starts with raw eggs, and only half of them will be boiled during the dyeing process. At the end, half of your eggs may be pretty, but they will still be raw! Be prepared to blow out the insides before you put them on display! And, remember, the silk tie dyes are not ones that are necessarily safe to eat. These are "for display only" eggs!

Successful Egg Science

Boiling and dyeing eggs is a wonderful chance for creative and scientific fun with your kids. How did you spruce up the science in your egg-dyeing this year? We would love to hear! Leave a comment below to tell us what you and your kids or students did.

When Mavericks' unusual sea floor terrain meets up with the perfect winter weather conditions rolling in from the Pacific Ocean, the surf's right for big waves. Students can learn more about the area's extreme surf with a range of hands-on science investigations.

In January, daredevil surfers and fans of extreme surfing gathered along Pillar Point, just outside of Half Moon Bay, CA, for Mavericks Invitational. It was the first time in three years that conditions were right to hold the event.

The surf break, which gets its name from the dog that tagged along with a trio of surfers who first decided the break wasn't surfable, was surfed solo by Jeff Clark for more than a decade before other big wave surfers gave the break a try. Winter storms in the Pacific Ocean create big waves at Mavericks, swells that often crest well over 25 feet and create a surfing challenge unlike any other.

Today, Mavericks has developed the kind of notoriety often heaped upon X-game-type sporting events. Since the annual Mavericks surf contest began, there have been both deaths and injuries, and only the elite are invited to brave the waves in an epic showdown that pits surfers against the biggest surf the Northern California coast has to offer. The mystique surrounding Mavericks is steep. The dynamics of the rocky ocean floor can be punishing. The force of the swell cannot be underestimated. This is not your ordinary big wave surfing.

One online surf guide describes Mavericks as "a cold heavy water wave, breaking over a punishing rock bottom with shifting currents [and] visited by great white sharks." Even for Hawaii's legendary big wave surfers, Maverick's is a watery beast of its own.

Though yearly in concept, the date of the Mavericks event varies. These are diehard surfers, but for the surf to be right, the conditions have to be perfect, and the contest window is open for only a few months in the winter. Once meteorological reports and ocean projections pinpoint the timing, a select group of surfers are invited for a surf contest that may happen as quickly as 24-48 hours later. Despite the short notice, the competition draws upwards of fifty thousand spectators and is webcast live.

Ocean Sciences, Math, Physics, and More

Predicting the surf at Mavericks requires precision forecasting. The team in charge of monitoring ocean and weather activity in hopes of finding a perfect mix of swell, tide, and wind spotted this year's oncoming Mavericks dynamics when the swell was still 3,000 miles out in the Pacific Ocean. Realizing the waves are coming and pinpointing competition-caliber surf conditions is the challenge for the Mavericks Invitational coordinators. Evaluating what's happening at the surface and at sea is part of the puzzle, but for surfing fans, understanding why the waves at Mavericks are so large requires investigating what's happening underneath the water, too.

When you make a map of the mountains and valleys, for example, of an area, you are mapping the topography of the land or the surface contours of the Earth. Bathymetry is a similar study of the depth of the ocean floor. Using bathymetry, contour maps are created that show the terrain of the ocean bottom. In the case of Mavericks, bathymetry studies reveal an unusual underwater ramp bordered by deep troughs on each side. The specifics of the ocean bottom in this area create a scenario of angles, speeds, and bending waves that result in the large, powerful, and unique Mavericks wave. For oceanographers, these waves are a fascinating example of the ways in which the ocean bottom, the weather up top, and laws of physics and math all come to play in wave formation.

Student Making Science Connections

Students interested in Mavericks, ocean sciences, or even extreme surfing, can learn more about related topics in the following science Project Ideas:

• Roaming Robots: Build Your Own Underwater Robot: Underwater data is gathered from a range of sources and techniques, but students curious about Mavericks can learn more about underwater robots that may be used to gather data about the ocean floor. The "Roaming Robots: Build Your Own Underwater Robot" Project Idea guides students in building and testing a simple DIY bot using familiar household or basement materials.
• The Science Behind Tsunamis: Study the Effect of Water Depth on Wave Velocity: What do Mavericks and Tsunamis have in common? Big waves, of course! But both also share velocity. The slope of the sea floor in the area of Mavericks is related to the way the energy of the waves are channeled to the shore. In this science project, students explore the relationship between ocean depth and wave speed.
• Ocean Currents: Modeling the 'Global Conveyor Belt' in Your Kitchen: Bathymetry has a lot to do with why Mavericks big waves are possible, but the "perfect" conditions event organizers watch for each year depend on certain weather conditions, the convergence of meteorological happenings that begin far from shore. In this science project, students explore the relationship between the channels of differing temperatures in the ocean and the velocity of ocean currents.
• Catch the Wave!: In this energy and power project, students use online ocean buoy data to determine possible coastal locations that could be used to harness wave energy as an alternative energy power system. What could a day of Mavericks-sized waves power (besides surfer enthusiasm)?

You may not ever "catch" a Mavericks wave. But with a bit of hands-on science, you can better understand what's going on both under the water and at the top as the waves roll in!

Adding graphs to your science project display board helps others see how your project went. Knowing when to use a histogram, and how it differs from other kinds of charts, might just give you a statistical edge!

Collecting your data is an important part of your science project. But once you have the data from your testing trials, what is the next step? Only by looking at your data can you really determine the outcome of your experiment and how your hypothesis held up. You've got a bunch of numbers or temperatures or sizes or weights or other values, each corresponding to what happened to your dependent variable when you made various changes to your independent variable. Your data, in other words, relates directly to your hypothesis.

If you said you thought that "y" would increase when you changed "x," the data you logged in your science laboratory notebook during your experiment should show values for y at each different x that you tested. Your data might make sense to you immediately, but to present your data so that others can see and make sense of your results, you may need a chart. But what kind? Bar chart? Pie chart? Line graph? What about a histogram? The kind of chart you need has a lot to do with what kind of data you collected. If your data involves "ranges" of numbers, a histogram might be in order.

A Histo-huh?

A histogram looks similar to a bar chart, but there is an important difference between the two. A histogram shows how data falls into numerical ranges or bins. If you are testing paper airplanes, you might make a chart that shows how far, on average, each different style of plane flew. A bar chart works fine to represent this data. By looking at your graph, you will be able to see, at a glance, which style of plane averaged the most distance. This is the kind of data gathering and charting you might do as part of the "How Far Will It Fly? Build & Test Paper Planes with Different Drag" aerodynamics Project Idea.

But what if you wanted to test, instead, two specific plane designs? You (and maybe some friends) might fly planes of each design fifty or more times each and record the distance for each flight. While you might create a cumulative bar graph comparing the average results of the two designs, you might also chart your data for each plane, showing how many times x-style plane flew 0-5ft, 6-10ft, 11-15ft, 16-20ft, 21-25ft, and 26-30ft. Each of your data points, each distance you recorded, would fit into one of those numerical "buckets." By sorting your data into numerical ranges, you make a histogram.

Tracking Trajectory

The new "Bet You Can't Hit Me! The Science of Catapult Statistics" math Project Idea lets you get hands-on with histograms. In this math project, you'll use the cool Ping Pong Catapult kit to experiment with the launch settings needed to propel a ball a certain distance (or at a certain target). Which pull-back angle will yield the longest launch? Pick an angle, catapult a ping pong ball fifty or more times, measuring the distance each ball travels before hitting the ground, and then plot your data. Pick another pull-back angle, or change another variable, and see which setting works better. Using histograms, you can explore the statistics related to your data. What's the mean distance for a certain launch profile? What's the standard deviation of the data? What's the distribution?

The ping pong exploration is a fun way to experiment with the physics of the catapult and put practical statistics in action at the same time. (This is only one of several projects students can do with the Ping Pong Catapult science kit from the Science Buddies Store.)

A Sweet Math Extension

After getting some practice with ping pong balls, you can do a similar statistics project, and get more hands-on practice with histograms, by creating an independent variation based on the "M&M Math" Project Idea. A bar chart is fine if you just want to show how many candies of each color, on average, were in the bag of candies you opened at lunch. But what if you want to see how often each color shows up when you count the candies in a dozen different bags? Get to counting! When you are done, you can create a separate histogram for each of your candy colors and compare how the colors are distributed.

After that? Grab some friends and share!

The National STEM video game competition supports the potential of video game design as a tool for STEM education and rewards and encourages the learning process for emerging student video game developers. Science Buddies' video game design resources can help students get started on a path of game design and development that transforms a love of video game playing into an innovative process of game creation. What kind of video game will you build?

The 2013 National STEM Video Game Challenge is on! Video game designers in middle and high school are invited to create a STEM-centered video game that shows off their video game design skills through the creation of an engaging game. The game can be educational in theme. Your game might revolve around a science concept or require the use of math to succeed, but games for the STEM Video Game Challenge to do not have to be educational. Building the game, in and of itself, is educational and is one way of putting science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) into action and into real-world scenarios.

Players can create entries using their choice of a range of game design applications, including popular free tools and sites like Gamestar Mechanic, Scratch, GameMaker, and Kodu. Each of those tools is a separate entry category, and prizes are awarded for middle and high school winners in each category. Students who are game building using other tools or program languages submit their games in the "Open Platform" category.

The deadline for entries is April 24, 2013, which means you still have plenty of time to whip up your own awesome video game project and show your stuff. Whether it is your very first attempt at video game creation or the next in an impressive string of epic games you've been tweaking, playtesting, and sharing with your friends, take a step toward the public light and put your game out there! There are great prizes up for grabs along with plenty of gamer bragging rights for the winning student video game developers.

Getting Started

If you are interested in the STEM Video Game Challenge but are not sure how to get started with your first game, the following resources and Project Ideas at Science Buddies walk you through some basics, open your eyes to what is possible, and may help get you started on an exciting path of video game and computer innovation! Many aspiring game designers first make the leap from playing to creating by solving crossover challenges at Gamestar Mechanic and then building their own Gamestar Mechanic games. Scratch can also be a great first step for students interested in video game design and/or computer programming. GameMaker offers a different environment and may be a next step in a game coder's evolution.

If the National STEM Video Game Challenge is your goal, the following resources may be helpful as tutorials rather than projects, but as you read through the materials, be sure and load up your game design environment and try some of these ideas hands-on. The best way to learn to make a video game is to make one, and the best way to refine and advance your know-how is to continue to try new things and add to your video game design toolbox. The more you know about how things work in a video game, why they work, and what makes a great game, the stronger your own games may be, so give these projects and resources a look:

• Want To Make a Video Game? Here's How!: make your first Scratch program.


• Power Play: How Does Animation Timing Affect Your Perception of Game Action?: experiment with the timing of game movements in Scratch.


• Quick Draw McPaws: Teach A Computer Kitty How to Draw Shapes: get a grip on how to draw shapes and work with "go to" and "pen down" blocks in Scratch.


• Making It Real: Incorporating Physics in Video Games: explore the role of physics in your game design using GameMaker.


• Go Fish! Creating an Ocean-Friendly Fishing Video Game: use GameMaker to create a game with an educational theme.


• Resource: Kid-Friendly Programming Languages: suggestions for languages/programming environments for K-12 students interested in making video games.


• Resource: Scratch User Guide: coverage of Scratch basics, installation, and troubleshooting.


• Resource: GameMaker User Guide: links to tutorials, examples, and other resources for GameMaker.


• Resource: Tips and Resources for Making Video and Computer Games: helpful information and links to resources that help define what makes a "good" video game.

If you enter the National STEM Video Challenge, we want to know! Please leave a comment or email blog@sciencebuddies.org to tell us about your game. We would love to feature your work here at Science Buddies, too!

The above photos were taken during the creation of the "Particles in the Mist: See Radioactive Particles Decay with Your Own Cloud Chamber!" physics Project Idea. Radioactive decay particles are too small to reflect light and too small to see, but with a cloud chamber, you can confirm their presence and observe their movements by viewing the trail of ions they leave as they move throughout the chamber.

This science project guides students in the construction of a DIY cloud chamber made from household materials. To observe the process of radioactive decay in this project, you will need a safe radioactive source. You can buy a ²¹⁰Pb needle or you can dismantle an ionizing smoke detector to get at the radioactive source inside. If you like to take things apart, grab your tools! (Note: This one will not go back together in the end!)