Category Archives: STEM

Shovercraft Build

Basic parts used to make a "shoveable hovercraft"
Basic parts used to make a “shoveable hovercraft”

The mentors have met after our last group meeting and we decided on a Shovercraft as our first group build project. It looks like there will be at least 3 groups of 3-4 kids building one, then we’ll have a competition/race in August.

Our next meeting is Thursday June 12 at 7pm in the Community Room above Eli’s Books just off the square downtown. Please feel free to join us, we have 4 mentors willing to give their time so we can investigate, design, and create these craft for the competition. Even if you haven’t been involved so far, you’re welcome to show up and have your 9-14 year old daughter/son participate in this youth-centered maker club event.

Keep watching our Projects page for more details on how the team builds are going & when we’ll have the challenge/competition for the groups in August.

Youth Maker Group Meeting

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Some of the younger kids at the kickoff meeting looking at possible projects we could make.

Thanks to all that made it Monday night at Crown Equipment to the meeting on creating a Putnam County maker group for youth. Seemed like a fairly good turnout for a first time meeting. We had 21 people there by my count – enough to get something going!

We briefly covered what the maker movement is, categories of possible projects, the making process, and some ideas for projects groups could do. There were also some Arduino boards & shields, a small hand built catapult, various magazines full of possible projects, a 3D printed chess set, and lots of pictures of maker groups and built projects. Several people indicated they wanted to come, had conflicts, and to count them in – I’ll get you the info presented. If you’re reading this and interested, drop me an email and I can also send you a copy of the presentation.

People afterwards filling out interest forms.
People afterwards filling out interest forms.

We also gave out some forms to the kids with a listing of possible project categories and a form for possible mentors to list their knowledge/expertise areas. I’ve now got a stack that is apparently bigger than the attendance – some families only were able to send one parent and several people there were representing other families too. It’s going to take me a few days to get through these and compile the list. If you were there at the meeting please be patient until I can read through & summarize the results. If you weren’t there, here’s a copy of the youth interest form and the mentor form. You’ll have to print these out and email them back – or heck maybe in true maker fashion maybe someone can make an online form!!

Dayton Hamvention

Dayton Hamvention Slow Scan Video Transmission from Balloon at 1000 feet
Dayton Hamvention Slow Scan Video Transmission from Balloon at 1000 feet.

Next weekend (5/16-18) in Dayton Ohio will be the annual Dayton Hamvention. With about 25,000 people attending that are interested in building ‘stuff’ and over 2000 outside flea market spaces (never mind all the indoor commercial vendors there) it is truly an amazing event for makers. This year’s theme even reflects that – “Makers… the future of Ham Radio.”

Many people when they hear about Amateur Radio (or Ham Radio) Operator imagine an elderly guy with a green visor hunched over a telegraph key. Matter of fact several years ago Jay Leno pitted teenagers using a cellphone against some amateur radio operators using morse code to see who was fastest at sending a message (the ham radio operators won).

Amateur radio these days is far from that doing everything from building and launching satellites, providing emergency communications during catastrophic and public events, bouncing signals off the moon to talk with other ham radio operators and much, much more. Many of our astronauts are ham operators and use the amateur radio station in the International Space Station to talk to classrooms. There was a group when I was in Terre Haute that was trying to put together a classroom broadcast to the space station -I’ve often thought that it would be a good educational experience for kids in Putnam county to talk live to an astronaut in space.

If you’re interested in finding out more about amateur radio in Putnam County, George Edenfield (KB9RZK) would be a good person to contact. He’s the IT person at Putnam County Public Library & you can reach him at 765.653.5327. I’m not longer ‘radio-active’ but still have my license and use the skills in electronics/home-brew projects/fabricating things that I learned as an amateur radio operator. Or head over to Dayton next weekend and gawk to learn more. If you’ve never been you’ll definitely be impressed. – Chris (N9VFD)

Robotics Exhibition Reminder

 

VEX Robotics Competition Exhibition in Greencastle, Indiana
VEX Robotics Competition Exhibition in Greencastle, Indiana

Don’t forget that this Saturday, April 5th, from 10am to 1 pm in the Community Room there will be a robotics competition exhibition at the Area 30 Career Center in Greencastle. A flyer for the event describes a little more on it and the public is welcome!

Club Cyberia, a Makerspace in Indianapolis, is having an open project day this Saturday from 1-6 pm. I’m heading over to visit & to learn more about how their model works – update later!

Aviation Exhibit

Cold War Gallery of the USAF National Museum
Part of the collection of planes at the USAF Museum

There’s an incredible aviation exhibit about 3 hour drive from Greencastle – the National Museum of the US Air Force. Well worth the drive, it’s just slightly east of Dayton and south of I-70. It’s been decades since I was last there & full of technology and just general “Wow’s”.

They have over 350 actual planes organized by era in 3 gigantic hangers with some smaller building additions for more displays. One of the ‘smaller’ building displays, the space exhibit, holds several Titan missiles along with a Mercury and Gemini capsule plus cool spacecraft ‘accessories’ on the way to that building. I didn’t realize they had a space shuttle there, check out the viewing port if there with the onboard toilet (some view!). There’s also a smaller outside display of aircraft and a WWII control tower.

Insider tip – the presidential gallery tour (located on the base not at the museum) fills up early. You have to register for this & we missed it, takes a shuttle bus to get there. One highlight is the John F. Kennedy Air Force One plane in use when he was assassinated.

Admission is free, except for a charge for the IMAX theater movies if you do that but it does go to the museum. There are kid friendly things to do (try the scavenger hunt & walk inside the space shuttle), they also have bigger STEM / kid oriented events on certain weekends. An upcoming one that looks promising is the annual Spacefest 2014 on May 16-17.

And while you’re in the area if you’re interested in surplus/source materials to build things I went in one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been for that – Mendelson’s Liquidation Outlet in downtown Dayton. Heard about it many years ago at one of the ARRL/Dayton Hamvention events but never had been there. I’m still speechless about the ‘stuff’ in that place (and yes the picture is correct that’s a 6 story building – another one seems to be across the street too not in that picture).

Upcoming Spring Fest

One of the goals of this blog is to help let folks in the Putnam County Indiana area find out about STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) experiences and learning opportunities in the area – for both young and old. You may have missed the Rube Goldberg competition at Purdue less than an hour north of Greencastle a few weeks ago – it wasn’t publicized very well but fun to watch for those that made it.

There’s another upcoming opportunity on April 12 & 13 at Purdue, their annual Spring Fest. If you’re into insects, I’ve heard it’s not to be missed but it’s much more than that. Free and targeted at families & children of all ages, it’s has lots of hands-on learning from many of the different science and engineering colleges at Purdue. Their flyer perhaps describes it best.

One special event this year not mentioned in the flyer will be a reunion Saturday night of NASA astronauts that graduated from Purdue at 7pm Saturday night. Eight astronauts are listed for the event currently! Many years ago while at the Osh Gosh airshow I walked into a session where they had an astronaut from each Apollo mission telling stories about their trip – one of the most amazing lectures I’ve ever heard. If it’s anything like that you won’t want to miss it!!

BTW, in case you’re into Rube Goldberg contraptions there’s some info on the Rube Goldber website about the competitions, turns out they have high school teams competitions besides the collegiate level events.