We have several basic STEM challenges for all ages, designed as challenge play and discovery with simple materials suitable from pre-school on-up. Design and build challenges include topics in architecture, engineering, and electricity. Each challenge presents a design problem and set of materials for its solution.
Challenges are open-ended; there is no “correct” solution. Each challenge offers opportunity to explore how design, materials, and creative choice combine to solve problems.
- Architecture / Buildings
- Cell Tower Design Challenge – design the tallest self-standing tower with limited materials.
- Bridge Building: Three Challenges – design and build a bridge from simple materials, and test its strength.
- Hurricane Challenge – “A Place for a Pig”– Design and build from limited materials a “Place for a Pig” strong enough to withstand a huffing-and-puffing wolf … or a hurricane.
- She-Shed/He-Shed – Here’s your chance to design your own special space and model what goes into it. Whether you become a professional architect or builder, or use what they produce, thinking about what you want in the space around you is an exercise for a lifetime.
- Marble Rollercoaster – popular and surprisingly instructive play exercise that develops intuitive understanding of potential and kinetic energy, conversion between the two, and the energy losses that come from friction and rolling resistance. A marble, a set of foam tubes cut lengthwise to make a track, tape, a launch tower, and the end-cup to catch the marble …and these challenges for the roller coaster: a hill, a loop, a spiral drop, and any combination of two or more! Lots of fun … and captivatingly hard!
- Transport
- Paper Airplanes – who doesn’t love paper airplanes?! But do you have any idea how many designs there are?
- Puff Mobiles
- Robots
- Ciphers and Codes
- Cyclic Shift / Transposition (Caesar Cipher)
- Substitution
- Code Books
- Electricity
- Switches
- Logic Circuits – Design logic circuits for basic computer operations, using simple Do-It-Yourself switches, or in TinkerCAD Circuits, a Computer-Aided-Design tool with simulation.