Students at the Challenger Learning Center’s Girl’s Day had the chance to pose with their creative egg containers before completing the egg drop challenge.
RIDER Attends Girl’s Day at The Challenger Learning Center, A K-12 STEM Outreach Event
On Thursday, February 23, the Challenger Learning Center hosted Girl’s Day, an opportunity for young K-12 girls interested in STEM to learn about the science going on in our community. RIDER had the chance to meet these young scientists and introduce them to our initiatives with fun, interactive exhibits that captured the mission of RIDER.
Some of the RIDER faculty and staff in attendance included Will Hill, Dr. Nasrin Alamdari, Demi Nichols, Dr. Sara Kamanmalek, a postdoctoral researcher with Dr. Alamdari, and Alex Music, science communication intern.
Young engineers designed containers for the egg drop challenge using repurposed materials.
Dr. Alamdari, co-director of RIDER’s WaSCH Laboratory, is dedicated to community outreach. She was able to represent real world waterflow situations in our community through point-source and non-point-source pollutants through a watershed model. Students were able to see how rain, flooding, and other factors affect our waterways through polluted runoff from places like construction sites. The girls enjoyed spraying water on the model to mimic rain and seeing the effects of what we put into our environment has on our stormwater system.
“Being an inspiration to these young women is what it’s all about. Increasing awareness to the effects we have as individuals on our stormwater system and getting kids interested from a young age will have a lasting impression as they contribute to our water systems.”
-Dr. Alamdari, co-director of the WaSCH Laboratory
Dr. Alamdari working with a student to demonstrate how water systems can become polluted after runoff from rain.
Another key exhibit was the marshmallow-toothpick bridge. Students got creative, building their own bridge using toothpicks as members and marshmallows as joints. This mimics the real-world engineering problem of creating infrastructure that’s structurally sound and useful to communities. The girls in attendance were very creative and built some amazing model bridges, plus other structures and tasty displays!
A young engineer working on her toothpick bridge creation, inspired by designs that work in the real world.
Our most popular event of the night was the chance for attendees to participate in an egg drop challgenge from the second floor of the building. Students were able to design a safety container for their egg using varous materials like rubber gloves, paper, trash bags, rubber bands, and more. Girls experienced the importance of sustainability, Newton's second law, acceleration, collision, and resilience all in one experiment.
Many participants were able to design a container that resulted in their egg surviving the drop, and the ones that didn’t were encouraged to start again using their new knowledge.
“Emphasizing the importance of sustainability and inguenuity into one fun experiment was great. Watching the girls engineer their designs for the egg drop was even better.”
-Will Hill, assistant director
We look forward to coming back to Girl’s Day next year, and be sure to follow RIDER on social media to find out what event we’ll be at next.
