We were invited to set up a table at the Patrick Air Force Base 45th Force Support Squadron’s ‘All SySTEMs Go’ program June 11, 2016 that was created to generate military children’s interest in science, technology, engineering and math. They really only expected us to bring a 3D printer to show to the kids as they went through all the tables set up by NASA, WornderWorks, Harris, and the Air Force showing cool things like Tesla Coils, stomp rockets, freezing things with liquid nitrogen, and pausing to watch a model rocket launch from the baseball field outside. There was another kid that built a snake robot from Lego Mindstorms and showed the younger kids how to drive it around with a tablet computer. We also brought examples of things cut with our 40 watt laser, a first person view drone (we weren’t allowed to fly it), a mini sumo robot, and google cardboard virtual reality goggles (but the plastic kind). Hopefully we helped encourage enough kids to start looking into technical and scientific interests and even come to some of our classes where we will teach how to make robots! Stay tuned to our meetup.com page for events like that and other interests including sewing and costume making including props with lights and sounds.
Here are just a few photos from the event:
Even MORE photos can be found here:
https://goo.gl/photos/YU8bxpt8jHM1FQURA
And here are two stories posted by the Air Force:
http://www.patrick.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/802200/patrick-hosts-all-systems-go-first-ever-stem-event