STEAM night: Showcasing Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathmatics

It's always great to see schools, organizations, parents, and kids engaging in STEM activities.  I was able to participate and see such a great event this past week.  It was STEAM night organized by Laurel Park Elementary School.  I had fun engaging the kids, but there were  a lot of other great exhibitors!  I thought I would show a little information about the ones I able to see.

Here are a few details about some great folks and programs that are helping to educate our kids for the future.

Happy Little Circuits

I wish I knew more about robotics.  Well this group of kids not only knows about robotics, but they build them.   Happy Little Circuits is a robotics team from Apex High School.  They had some robots on display to interact with the kids.  There website is http://apexroboticsfirst.weebly.com/

Why is it important to teach our kids about robotics?  Here is an article from a local newspaper just the other day.

North Carolina Air Quality

The NC Air quality was available for questions.

The booth had a neat little craft to collect pollen from the air.

Space

One of my favorite subjects is SPACE!!   And there was some great information on constellations and observing the upcoming solar eclipse.

Did you know there will be a total solar eclipse for much of North America on August 21, 2017.   NASA even has a page dedicated to this event.  Check it out!

https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/

The booth also had handouts on how to look at the eclipse.

The Little Medical School

The little medical school is all about bringing medicine, science, and the importance of health to children in entertaining, exciting, and fun ways.   There is more information at their website:

www.littlemedicalschool.com

Treasure Quest Mining 

Treasure Quest Mining is a mobile gem mining and treasure hunting experience.  They were at STEAM night showing off all kinds of rocks to interested kids.

Academy of Engineering and Advanced Manufacturing

The Academy of Engineering and Advanced Manufacturing is a learning community within Apex Friendship High School.  The academy introduces students to career opportunities within STEM.

eMammal

This was one of my favorite booths.  There is a program called eMammal that can be used by anyone to collect pictures of animals for the Smithsonian

A local middle school had participated in the program.   After hearing about this program I really want to join in the fun.  If you are interested be sure to go check out the eMammal site.

https://emammal.si.edu/

BounceU

BounceU is a bounce house for kids.  However they run robotics camps as well for kids.    They had a robot on display.

NC Fossil Club

Did you know North Carolina had a fossil club?  I did not either.    Some representatives from the club were there to share and show off some fossils.   If you want to learn more you can visit their website:

http://www.ncfossilclub.org/

Laurel Park Elementary School

Laurel Park was getting in on the action by demonstrating how to make a battery from fruit.   I have an earlier blog post showing off how you could do this activity yourself.

Beekeeping

A local beekeeper was showing off what it means to have your own beehives.

RoboEagles Team

The RoboEagles Team is a fifth year robotics competition team that was showing off their robots.  They had a robot on display that threw a large ball.  The kids had a chance to try and catch a ball thrown by the robot. 

Their website is here where you can see exactly what their robots look like:

http://www.roboeagles.org/

NC State Entomology Department 

Do you like bugs?  Well there was an NC State entomologist on hand to show off some really cool bugs.    Here are a few of the ones on display.

Here are a few of the ones on display.

A Madagascar Hissing Cockroach and Vinegaroon.   The vinegaroon sprays acetic acid which smells like vinegar!!

A Thorny Devil

Tarantula

 Cave Cockroach

DNA Extraction

And finally I was around to extract DNA with kids and teach what DNA is all about.   We demonstrated that even plants have DNA!  In 2 hours we did over 50 DNA extractions!

I probably missed a few booths at STEAM night.  There was just so much to see and do in only 2 hours.  I really applaud Laurel Park Elementary and all the other schools and organizations that took to show off what they do.  Just as important are the parents that volunteer to help out or bring their kids to these type of events.   That time will translate in helping many kids better understand some of the opportunities available to them the STEAM area.  It was a great night and I look forward to the next one.

Brewing Beer - Berliner Weisse

I wanted to share beer brewing experiences, at least when the beer turns out to be good.   :)   This was one that a friend and I worked on on the end of 2016.  Kirk is the real expert here and so I learned a lot from this brew.  He asked me what I wanted to brew and I said can we brew a sour beer.   This is how we did it.

First we need to do a little prep work.  Keeping everything clean is super important.  Star San is a great sanitizer for surface sanitation.  The great thing about this product is you do not need rinse it off.  Just soak your equipmen or dip your supplies in a solution of this stuff and  you are good to go.

We also want to get rid chlorine and chloramine in our water.  So adding campden tablets to our water will take care of this.  

Next we need to get our water boiling to get it good and sterile.  This will be a 5 gallon batch of beer and we are going to go ahead and boil all 5 gallons.  Having a pot with a temperature gauge is very helpful.  Just don't watch while waiting for a pot to boil.  It will go much slower!

  

 Once we get a good boil we can pull the pot off the heat and add the extract.  For this beer we are adding 6 pounds of Munton's Plain wheat extract.  This extract is 55% wheat and 45% barley.

 Once the extract is added we need to stir to make sure it is dissolved well.  We also don't want it to  stick to the bottom and burn.

Finally we need to cool the wort to ~ 120 degrees Fahrenheit.  What makes this beer different than other beers is we have this extra souring step.  Normally we would boil some hops, cool, and pitch our yeast.  In this case we need to "sour" the beer.  A bacteria called Lactobacillus can be added to our wort and will start eating the sugars.  In this process it is souring the beer and giving the flavor we are looking for.  This bacteria likes to grow between 100 and 120 degrees F and so we need to cool our wort to this temperature.   We used a copper coil to get the temperature down.  Kirk had a little sump pump to help pump water through the coil and back into the sink.

Once the temperature is down to the correct place, we need to get some Lactobacillus into our wort.  This can be accomplished in a number of ways.  You can buy cultures.  A cheaper way is to buy some wheat grain and throw them into your wort.  Wheat naturally harbors Lactobacillus and is a great way to introduce Lactobacillus.  A couple hand fulls should be good.

Now we need to create an environment where Lactobacillus grows well and where "bad" bacteria cannot out compete the Lactobacillus.  We need to give the wort a cover since it will be sitting here for a few days.  Se-ram wrap works great.  Get a thick and tight covering over your wort.

We let the wort sit for 3-4 days at the correct temperature so it can sour.  We let it sit on the stove on the simmer setting the entire time and it kept the temperature perfect.  You can take a few taste samples at day 2-4 to get it to your desired sour level.  

After 3-4 days we can start the next part of the process.   First we need to remove all those wheat grains.   

Next we are going to do another boil.  Our beer is soured and we want to kill any other bad stuff that may be growing in our wort.  We also want to add hops.  Here are the hops we used.

After the hops boil, we cool the wort again with our cooling coil.

Once we are at the right temperature we are ready to move the wort to the fermentation carboy and pitch our yeast!

We make sure our carboy is sanitized.

 Then we move the wort over.  A funnel with a strainer is needed here to keep all the hop material out.

Now we pitch!   We just used yeast from white labs.

 Now its time for the yeast to do its thing.

After about 10 days we come back to see our beer!

 Now we are ready to keg it.  We just siphon the beer from the carboy to the kegs.  We used two kegs because we were splitting this batch.

After we fill our kegs, we just need to hook the kegs up to some CO2 to pressurize it and then it is ready to drink!  We put the C02 at about 30 psi, put the keg on its side and rolled it for a few minutes.  Be careful here as it is easy to overpressurize the beer especially when the keg is only half full like ours were.