It has been eight years since the Northern Nevada Chapter has had someone serving as the Student Activities Chair. This year, Andrew Huie stepped up to take on this role and I am very proud to say that he was able to organize a team of five ASHRAE Members from his Chapter to visit one of their local schools for a STEM classroom activity, achieving the K-12/STEM Leadership Award! This award was only given out to a total of ten Chapters in all of Society (180+ Chapters) last year, so for the Northern Nevada Chapter to accomplish this is very, very cool! See below for a recap from Andrew...
On April 18, the Northern Nevada ASHRAE Chapter took a trip out to Wadsworth to host a STEM Activity for Natchez Elementary School. Working with 2nd graders, the objective of the classroom visit was to expose the students to engineering and science through a hands on approach. The activity for this visit was titled "Leave It To Levers" and demonstrated how levers work along with the importance of this very simple machine.
The class was divided into five groups of 4-5 students with one ASHRAE member working closely with each group. Each table was provided with three different sized levers, cups and pennies for the experiment. The levers measured two inches from one end to the fulcrum point, then they measured six, twelve and eighteen inches to the other end of the lever. On the far side, one penny was placed for the load needing to be lifted, and on the shorter side, the second graders placed pennies until the lever was level.
The students took notes on how many pennies were required to move the load for all three lengths of levers and were able to observe a pattern in their results. They noticed that the lever with twelve inches to the load end took about twice as many pennies as the lever with six inches to the load end to move the same load. A similar observation was made for the remaining lever and we were able to explain the importance and usefulness of levers.
Overall, this was a very exciting and fun activity to host, and we look forward to continuing STEM outreach in the Northern Nevada area. For additional information on this classroom visit, please feel free to Andrew Huie (andrewh@applied-mech.com).