From trapping a toy, lifting a binder clip, and moving a stack of books, kids had to get creative to solve problems at a STEM Challenge in Scranton.
SCRANTON, Pa. — These minds are busy moving matter, and they are thinking of lots of ways to do it.
“And it always has a STEM focus. This year, the challenge is to build a Rube Goldberg machine,” said event organizer Karen McGahee.
By working in reverse, McGahee says the students enrolled with Reach Cyber Charter School will identify, conclude, and build a machine that accomplishes the task at hand.
It’s all a part of the public cyber charter school’s annual winter STEM challenge, bringing together kids from across the area.
“Hands-on, like they’re trying things out,” said McGahee. “They’re getting to see what doesn’t work, which I think is important. If it fails, we just try again, and it’s part of the engineering design process.”
Inside the event room at the Electric City Trolley Museum, each student picked from three challenges.
Trap a small toy, get a clip off the ground and onto the table, or move a stack of books.
It took Khali Garcia a few tries to get her winning result.
“I kind of added some weight with it. I made the string shorter so it would kind of work better,” said Garcia.
But the more tries, the better—anything to get the brain thinking.
“He loves building machines, so he does Lego robotics with our school,” said Ashley Colwell, as she watched her boys build their projects. “He always wants to come and do machines, so I love this, and this is Giovanni’s first time ever trying this.”
A day spent away from the textbooks and homework, but lots of lessons still learned.