Dr. A.R. Teem’s Carnival of STEAM-antics goes under the Big Top for the first time!
This past weekend, March 27th and 28th, 2015 Areteem Institute was thrilled to be a part of our first Los Angeles County Science and Engineering Fair! As an exhibitor we premiered our wonderful “Dr. A.R. Teem’s Carnival of STEAM-antics” interactive booth, complete with four “attractions” under a “Big Top” tent and our colorful costumed staff acting as different carnival performers! Students, parents and even educators came by to check out the “side shows” and other activities that were going on, including asking us about our three summer camp locations at UCLA, Boston College and the University of Chicago with camp brochures on hand to pass out to people. Each of the different attractions in fact represented particular aspects of our academic tracks at the summer camps with a focus on our subjects in science, technology, engineering and science fiction. Greeting people as they walked by our exhibit was our large K’nex roller coaster kit for students to try out as well as a large LCD screen to show students how our roller coaster software works. Students were asked how roller coasters function as well as shown demonstrations on how to use the software to design their own coaster tracks by our “roller coaster ride operator”. Next students played around in our futuristic robot world where the “Steampunk robot engineer” taught students how our motion-sensitive Lego MINDSTORMS robots. For our two “side shows” students were taken on a tour through OZ by one of its “citizens’ or “the Wizard of OZ” himself where they engaged in scientific experiments showcasing different aspects of nature and weather such as how a hot air balloon rises into the sky, how tornados form and how many colors are in a rainbow. Lastly, students ventured into the darkest part of our Big Top to help “Dr. Frankenstein” perform electrical experiments in his laboratory. Students were able to crank up his AC/DC generator as well as sparked life into a plasma ball to create electricity, learning about real-life inventors such as Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla from the 19th century.
Overall, we had a fun time and were able to speak with so many great students who were presenting their projects at the fair. We also met with a few of the other exhibitors who also came from a variety of backgrounds including SpaceX, NASA, the Columbia Memorial Space Center in Downey, the Southwestern Herpetologists Society with their snakes and lizards on display, students from California State Los Angeles (CSULA)’s Eco Car 3 project, Deezmaker 3D Printers and Hackerspace, UCode: K-12 Coding Classes, the Orangutan Conservancy and the Planetary Society.
We hope to come back for another year as the carnival travels on to future events with Dr. A.R. Teem leading the way! Who knows, maybe the Big Top will come to your area soon! Check out our photo gallery to see where all the action was this past weekend, enjoy!
For anyone interested in having our carnival come to their next event, especially when in involves STEAM subjects for K-12 students, please let us know by phone at (949) 679-8989 or emailing us at info@areteem.org.
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