For he summer I am living in Troy working for RCOS and the Dean of Students Office doing summer pipeline programs. The programs are all about exposing grade school students to the STEM fields and hopefully garnering an interest in pursuing science and math related fields.
I work as a camp counselor and I love it. We just finished our first week of camp and it was really good. We hosted students from Harlem Academy for three days and showed them some really cool stuff. As a counselor I got just as into the events as a lot of the students. We got to burn Cheerio’s and Frito’s to show the difference in calories and then we got to tour RPI’s MILL where we saw a waterjet, industrial robots, a CNC mill, a 3d printer, a laser cutter and a lot more. It was all really exciting and interesting. We also got to play with LEGO Mindstorms robots and show the 5th and 6th graders the basics of robotics and programming. A physics “magic” show was another stop and we got to play with a lot of cool physics focusing mostly on electricity and magnetism. A favorite was launching a metal ring into the air using a super powerful electromagnet. Another cool experiment was electron bending and playing with the current and magnets to move the field.
There was a lot of other fun stuff involved too and I got to tell the students, teachers, and parents what I am currently studying and involved in and take questions. I got a lot of great questions and even met a 5th grader that loved computers and wanted to study them too.I am doing 3 more camps this summer and can’t wait!