We had an awesome opportunity to show students how cool Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) can be on Saturday. The 4^th Annual Central Ohio ASCE STEM Expo took place at COSI, and it is the fourth year that Carpenter Marty Transportation participated as an activity sponsor. More than 450 students in Kindergarten through 8^th grade attended the FREE event. There were forty-four activities to inspire imaginations and create a spark of interest in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. Families that attended even received a ticket for a free viewing of the “Dream Big: Engineering Our World” film that is being shown on COSI’s IMAX screen through May. Click here for a preview of the film.

Carpenter Marty Transportation brought two activities to the STEM Expo this year. Our Balancing Robot station gave students creative freedom to color their robots, and then test its balance on one finger (or their nose!). Instructions and a free printable robot for the activity can be found on the Buggy and Buddy website.

Our second station was the Marshmallow Catapult. This activity involved planning, building and testing a catapult made of a wire coat hanger, rubber bands, and a plastic spoon. The intention of this activity is to work through an engineering design process that demonstrates one of the six simple machines: a lever. This activity seemed to be a crowd pleaser for not only the students, but the parents too. Marshmallows were flying all over the hallway! There were several parent-child challenges that took place, including hitting targets and catching the catapulted marshmallows in their mouths.

Our jobs were easy. Students were excited from the time they walked through the lobby. It was hard not to be inspired with all the experiments in the area. We felt a childish feeling an excitement to try each experiment ourselves. All the activities looked so fascinating! We had a blast and know the participants did too. The Carpenter Marty Transportation team is already looking forward to volunteering for next year’s event.