For some Pace Academy girls, it wasn’t enough just to see the movie, “Hidden Figures.” Through an after-school math and science club, they got to role play being scientists on a launch mission.
The Buckhead school’s Stargazers club acted as the flight crew, plotting trajectories, building a balloon “rocket” and launching it 100,000 feet up to collect data on the Earth’s curvature. The project, led by Pace parent Kirsten Travers-UyHam, worked with 8- and 9-year-old girls to recreate on a tiny scale what working for NASA is like.
“I don’t think it’s been done with children that young, but they were all very inspired by the movie,” said Travers-UyHam. “To send a NASA rocket into outer space costs tens of millions; for less than $1,000, we built something that went out, took photos and landed in a tree in Rome, Ga.”
The club’s “rocket” was a two-foot wide helium balloon with a parachute and equipment to record altitude and images. Getting it airborne required considerable calculations around payload, weight, trajectory and more, but that’s precisely the kind of real-world work Travers-UyHam wants students to experience.
“I’m a female mathematician, I work in finance and I’ve always been passionate about children realizing that math is everywhere in the world, from space to nature,” said the British-born mother of three Pace students. “For a lot of children in America, it’s so far to go to another country that they don’t know about changing time zones or currencies. I’m very passionate about sharing with children how global math is.”
Though the fall club was limited to girls, this term’s STEAM club consists of about a dozen boys and girls who are learning about science careers. “I really want to inspire them by having visitors talk to them,” said Travers-UyHam. “We’ve had doctors who had us looking at x-rays and putting in stitches. We had a taste engineer from Coca-Cola who showed us how to mix our own fizzy drinks with colors. This semester, during the Olympics, we looked at classical mechanics and the physics of spinning, sliding, curling and ice skating.”
But Travers-UyHam doesn’t forget that STEAM includes an artistic element as well. That was part of what drew 9-year-old Alex Eachus back to the club for a second time this term.
"I joined because it combines my favorite classes – science, technology, engineering, math and art," said the third grader. "Last year, we did a thing I really liked: We made a Rube Goldberg contraption that helped us learn about physics in a very cool way. But we first had to use different pieces to build it – marbles, blocks, ramps, dominoes. It was a lot of fun figuring it out."
Information about Pace Academy is online at paceacademy.org. Details about Travers-Uyham’s clubs are online at mathematicalbridge.com.
SEND US YOUR STORIES. Each week we look at programs, projects and successful endeavors at area schools, from pre-K to grad school. To suggest a story, contact H.M. Cauley at hm_cauley@yahoo.com or 770-744-3042.
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