A Week of InnoWorks
Hi everyone,
This past week, I served as a mentor for InnoWorks, a camp held on the Caltech campus for underprivileged middle school students. This camp is a STEM2 initiative (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine) designed to help students develop problem-solving and analytical skills and foster a desire to ultimately pursue a career in the sciences.
Over the course of this week, I mentored two boys and two girls between 6th and 8th grade. Some of the more exciting activities we did included building and programming Lego Mindstorms robots, designing effective heart valves, pouring different solutions on pieces of liver, reading secret messages with dead fireflies, and racing solar boats. It was truly rewarding to see these students express their excitement for science and observe the positive impact all of the mentors had on the students. We also had several guest speakers come in and do really cool demonstrations that included dry ice, liquid nitrogen, and pig lungs. It was definitely an incredible (and exhausting) experience that I will never forget!
The pig lungs demo!
A group of students crowding around the dry ice demo.
Check out this article:
https://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_23817391/middle-school-students-get-taste-science-at-caltech
and these photos:
https://photos.pasadenastarnews.com/2013/08/07/photos-caltech-innoworks-shows-middle-school-students-the-fun-side-of-science-and-engineering/
to learn more about the camp!
