Tech 101 Kids Fair at the Hawthorne Library

Thank you to everyone who came out to support us on July 18th at the Hawthorne Library! We had a blast showing what our students made during our Scratch the Surface Workshop in June, from learning to code their own video games to learning about renewable energy to building paper towel roll cars to building spaghetti skyscrapers.

I talked about the importance of the engineering mindset in today’s world. To have the engineering mindset means to know how to break down complex problems into simpler problems and then solve them. This mindset was really important for the students in our workshop, as they had to solve various puzzles throughout the week, work in teams to build the larges spaghetti skyscraper, and even debug their Scratch code when it didn’t work.

On the last few days of our workshop, the kids built recyclable cars out of paper towel rolls, balloons, bottle caps, and straws. One of our students, Emma, came up and explained to the audience how this recyclable contraption worked. The balloon is attached to the car, so you blow up the balloon and it propels the car forward.

Bryan explained and demoed the MaKey MaKey, a circuit board that can turn any conductible object into a computer keyboard, and the Horizon Fuel Cell Car, a toy car powered by water. Brandon demoed Bob the Vegetation Relocator, and Arduino robot car with a Lego casing, and then solved a Rubik’s Cube in front the audience in less than a minute and a half.

Joseph showed everyone Joseph’s Robotic Hand, which can curl up to pick up paper balls and is made out of drinking straws and yarn. He then showed everybody his Bristle Bot, a bumper car brush bot that vibrated across the table, and is made out of a scrubbing brush, a 9V battery, and a vibration motor from an old PS2 remote.

Afterwards, we let everyone come up and check out the projects. Kids and parents all enjoyed our projects, from playing the MaKey MaKey banana piano to trying out Joseph’s Robotic Hand to learning how to solve Rubik’s Cubes on the spot.

All in all, another successful presentation from Tech 101 Kids.