STEM Club has returned with a host of new S1 and S2 members and Mr Boyce taking on a lead role of a project to design and build boats, ran by BAE Systems.

In the club, we have been working in groups of 4 to build boats made from cardboard and paper with the winners getting to go on and face other schools in a larger competition. After a heated competition, the Syndus and its creators were chosen to represent the school at the competition in May.

Congratulations to Robbie Hussain, Bilal Ahmed, Euan Hussain and Francois Husson who were the winning team. We’ll hear more from them after the final!

Just before our Christmas holiday saw the climax of the STEM project, which had been designed to test the programming of the Mars Rovers. There were three teams and they each had to programme the Rovers to complete an obstacle course in the shortest time possible. This was to simulate the Mars Rovers exploring Mars itself.

All of the STEM club would like to say a huge thank you to our STEM ambassador Ken Maxsted for all of his valuable time, hard work and enthusiasm for the project. Without Ken, this project would not have been able to run, with his knowledge and guidance helping put STEM into action for all of our members.

We would also like to thank our second STEM aambassador Lindsey Yuile for his support. Lindsey helped us gain the funding for our project through a generous grant from the Royal Society Partnership Grant scheme. 

The renewable Mars Rover Racers will take on a new phase in January 2013, as the Williamwood Design and Modelling club will take on the challenge of designing and building the exterior casing for the rovers.

For a picture gallery of the Rover races, click on the link below:

STEM Rover Race Photo Gallery

The penultimate STEM session of 2012 celebrated the success of the meticulously planned P7 workshops.

A dedicated team of STEM club members delivered three workshops to over 40 P7 pupils.

The sessions involved:

• Making a model hovercraft
• A presentation of our Mars Rover project
• A challenge to design and build a Mars Rover landing pad
• A fun maths quiz
• Identifying mystery objects using a microscope.

The team of STEM members who led the session thoroughly enjoyed themselves and showed fantastic communication and leadership skills throughout all of the sessions.

Feedback from the P7 pupils suggests that they also had a superb experience of all of the STEM areas.

For further pictures of this fantastic day, click on the link below:

P7 Visit – Photo Gallery

Several new images of the STEM team at work have been uploaded to this site. Click on the link below to find these!

STEM Photo Gallery

Scroll down to the bottom to see the latest images.

This week the STEM group started a new project. We split into two groups: one to look at programming the Rover, the other to devise experiments for the P7 science club.

The programming group was split into a further two teams, with both looking to to program the Rover through a U-shaped maze/track.

The P7 group have split into a further three groups. One is creating a PowerPoint presentation about their experiment and the Mars Rover project. Another team has an engineering theme and their P7 workshop is to create a bridge able to hold the weight of the Mars Rover. The last group is doing a Biology experiment and Maths Bingo.

Some pictures will follow early next week!

Due to a breakdown in communication, this update is arriving several weeks late!

Towards the end of October, the STEM team changed into different groups; Science, Technology (and Design), Engineering and Maths. Each group was given the task of creating an experiment or activity for the visiting P7s who are coming up to school soon.

The Science group are looking to perform the magnesium ribbon experiment, where a piece of magnesium is placed into a Bunsen burner flame, causing it to emit a bright flash of white light.

The Technology group are intending to do a “crash barrier” challenge, where pupils will need to design a barrier that will reduce the forces acting on a car that runs down a slope and into a wall.

The Engineering group intend to design a maze for the Rover. The P7 pupils will put down cards that represent coding to allow the Rover to move through the maze.

Finally, the Maths group is coming up with a maths relay.

Overall, the P7 pupils have plenty to look forward to!

This week, our two groups finally joined together.

Originally, the plan for the project had been to have an endurance race between Mars Rovers containing different energy sources. However, further research told us that solar energy (to power the Rover on the way to Mars) and wind energy (to power the Rover on Mars – yes, there are winds on Mars!), were the only options.

Instead, we have decided to test our programming skills by programming three robots and racing them against each other.

In the club this week, Ken explained to the whole group how the programming works, whilst our S6 mentors gave us a quiz on renewable energy. Undeniably, an exciting and busy week in STEM club!

At the last STEM meeting, we split into teams looking at NASA’s Curiosity rover and comparing it with our own. Their rover also uses solar power and is programmed in a similar way to ours. NASA have Engineering and Science teams, whereas ours are categorised as Energy and Engineering but in general, there are lots of similarities with how the project is being completed.

We have seen a few changes in personnel this year and our new teams are listed below:

Energy

Leader: Robbie

Co-ordinator: Alex

Team Members: Jordan, Bilal, Beth, Euan, Alistair, Jenny and Tyra.

Engineering

Leader: Steven

Co-ordinator: Megan

Team Members: David, Andrew, Francois, Dougie and Helen.

Welcome back to the STEM blog.

Our second block of work has begun and today we evaluated what we have done and what we want to do in the future.

Firstly, I spoke to the Engineering group. Francois said they had progressed well and learned to use Rovipro, before programming it to perform simple tasks, e.g. going forwards, backwards and turning. At the start there were a few system errors when programming from Rovipro. However, the group managed to overcome these errors and went on to complete the simple tasks mentioned earlier.

The group then looked at advanced tasks, such as using sensors to sense obstructions and turn away from them. This was a bit more difficult. Sometimes the coding order would be wrong or it would go in endless circles. The sensors failed and it wouldn’t “see” the wall that it was to avoid. They also cut up bits of paper to represent blocks of code to help them visualise the process.

The goals for the engineering team for the future is to learn a new type of programming, C, make general repairs and improve the design and to collaborate with the Energy group to power it. Also, because its function is to obtain rock samples, they should attach a mechanism or pipe to suck up rocks.

To help with this, the Energy group will test the solar panels and Robbie and Jordan will perform an experiment to see how long the solar batteries will last. This group, over the first STEM block, have looked at various energy sources and decided which one will be the best on Mars.

Next week, all the groups will be looking at the actual Mars Rover. The Energy group will look at its powering and the Engineering group the overall design of the vehicle. Check back to see how we get on!

On Friday 9th June our super six STEM team members represented our project at the annual Science and Engineering celebration at the Glasgow Science Centre.

Annie, Bilal, Francois, Dougie, Robbie and Euan all worked very hard in preparing an excellent presentation to showcase our project. The judges highly commended the group on their professionalism and enthusiasm. Many other visitors commented on how impressed they were with our project and on how original it was.

The super six really enjoyed their day of STEM challenges and science shows and are looking forward to returning next year with an even bigger and better showcase.

For a gallery of photographs from the event, click the picture of our presentation below.

It has been a year full of hard work from all STEM members and it is now time for a deserved break! The STEM project will return in early September…..so watch this space!