In lieu of a field trip on Friday, November 14th, we hosted a second volunteer training day of the semester. This time we partnered with Northeastern’s chapter of SWE (Society of Women Engineers) [NEU Link] – and so their volunteers had a chance to practice some of the activities we do with students: specifically reverse egg drop and paper rockets. STEM student Claire led Reverse Egg Drop presentation, SWE President Emily led us through the Wind Turbines presentation, and SWE Vice-President Ceci led us through the Paper Rockets presentation, and then our volunteers got to do a more advanced version of the activities (which are usually targeted towards 4th-8th grade students) -> using some of our least used materials. For the egg drop, we had two teams who had to use metal t-pins (very pointy metal parts) as part of their design (these have literally never been used before by students) -> shockingly, both of the eggs survived their falls into these designs. Another team had to primarily use chopsticks – and they very cleverly wove the chopsticks’ paper wrappers into a net. Interestingly, when we did the Paper Rockets activity, we also had two designs fail (which often happens with younger students) -> with the nosecone blowing off one design and the tiny rocket not working for another team. SWE will be coming to another field trip this Friday – and now they’re hopefully better prepared!
