Let’s learn all about how cells use DNA like a blueprint to build living things! We will start by learning about the basics of DNA and how all those instructions are written with only 4 different molecules. That’s like having an entire alphabet with only 4 letters! Once we learn the basics, you can play a Monster Maker Game from Arizona State University.  

How to Build a Monster

If you wanted to build a monster, a plant, or an animal, where would you start?  Where do architects start when they are building a house?  The best place to start if you are building a house, or any living thing, is with instructions.  For a house, this usually comes in the form of a large blueprint that maps out all the rooms, their location, and how much space they each have.  For plants, animals, and even monsters, there are teeny, tiny instructions that we call our genetic code that acts as our blueprint.

These instructions are held in each cell of every living organism. Cells are the compartments that make up all of the tissues in our body, like skin and bones, and most are so small they cannot be seen without a magnifying glass or microscope. If you unravel the DNA in each of these cells, the genetic code can be stretched out to over 6 feet long! Within this strand is all the information required to build and keep an organism alive. These instructions are made of various combinations of only 4 different molecules.

DNA is the material that carries all the information about how a living thing will look and function. For instance, DNA in humans determines such things as what color the eyes are and how the lungs work. Each piece of information is carried on a different section of the DNA. These sections are called genes. DNA is short for deoxyribonucleic acid. It is in every cell of every living thing.

DNA has a complex structure. It is made of chemical substances that are linked together like a chain. Each piece of DNA has two long strands or chains. The two strands are joined together. They form a shape like a ladder that has been twisted into a spiral.

Chemicals called phosphates and sugars make up the sides of the ladder. DNA also has chemicals called bases. Each base on one strand is joined to a base on the other strand. The linked bases form the rungs of the ladder.

There are four different bases in DNA: adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine. These four chemicals are repeated in different orders over and over again in each strand of DNA. Human DNA contains about 3 billion pairs of these bases. This base pairing is very specific—because of their structures, an adenine can only pair with thymine, and cytosine can only pair with guanine. Thus joined, the ladder-shaped DNA strands are coiled around each other, forming a spiral or double helix.

Combinations of Molecules

Molecules are tiny compounds of smaller atoms, which are the smallest units of matter that still act as an element, such as oxygen or carbon.  DNA strands are made of long connections of different combinations of 4 molecules, which we can think of as letters or colors. For example, let’s take 2 colors: yellow and red. If you are allowed to make a string of 3 colors, let’s see how many different combinations you can make.

Let’s start with just one color: yellow. What combinations can we make? Only one, right?

The whole thing would have to be yellow since that’s the only color we have.

What if we add a second color? Let’s add red. Now, how many combinations can we make?

So all together, using yellow and red, we already have 8 different combinations we could make. 

If we had 3 colors, we could make 27 combinations.

If we had 4 colors, we could make 64 combinations. Each of these combinations gives a unique instruction to the cell.

This table shows how many different orders of combinations you can make with different string lengths and different numbers of colors:

What’s really amazing is how complex these instructions can be, using only 4 different colors. If we put some of these 3-color combinations together, as if we were putting different letters together to make words, we could make even more combinations.

Let’s think again about our 4 colors that can stand for different DNA molecules… red, yellow, blue, and green. These colors could join together like colored beads in a long necklace (or strand), hundreds or thousands of beads long.

One more thing to think about when you are imagining these necklaces is that DNA actually has two strands of colors, or molecules, that are connected, with certain colors almost always sticking together. For example, red would go with yellow, and blue would go with green.

Once we have these long, double strands, we have long sections in them that we call “genes.”  A gene is a section of DNA that decides what traits we will have, such as if our eyes will be blue or what color our hair is. Monster DNA might decide if they have polka-dots on their body or if they have one or two eyes or horns.

Scientists Use DNA to Try to Fight Disease

Using computers that can search through the long, long instruction set, or code, that makes up human DNA, scientists try to find patterns in the instructions. Most of the time, scientists expect humans to have the same code as each other.

However, even for important traits like the structure of your cells, sometimes a single DNA molecule will be different than it should be, or there can be missing or extra molecules. These are called DNA mutations, which means the DNA is changed. By finding these mistakes in the pattern, scientists may learn what part of the code may be causing problems, such as different diseases, or which instructions may help a person to avoid disease.

Click Here to Play Monster Maker from Arizona State University 

Join us on Wednesday, May 5th at 2 p.m. for a fun filled session of STEM Club, where we will learn even more about the chemistry of soap!

Color Exploding Magic Milk Chemistry Experiment used to make Marbled Magic Milk Paper

Materials: 

Instructions: 

1. Cut your watercolor paper to a size that easily fits within your tray. Place the stack of paper near your tray; once your start swirling the colors you will have to work quickly to get the best effects.
2. Pour roughly 3-4 tablespoons of milk into a tray; basically enough for a thin layer of milk that covers the bottom of your tray.
3. Add in drops of food coloring around the milk.
4. Dip a q-tip into the dish soap and then dip it into the milk. The soap and food coloring will now start interacting.
5. Before the colors get too mixed together, take one sheet of paper and lay it on top of the milk mixture. Press down gently, then gently lift it, set aside to dry, and continue with additional sheets.
6. Let everything dry completely.

Scientific Explanation:

What causes the food coloring in the milk to move? 

Simplified Response:

The dish soap does not mix with the milk. Instead, it floats on top and spreads over the surface. As it spreads, it grabs the food coloring. Soap is a “degreaser”, so the molecules in it are attacking the fat in the milk, causing motion which creates the swirling of the colors. Where the colors meet, they combine and form new colors. 

More Advanced Response:

Liquids like water and milk have a property known as surface tension, due to the cohesive forces of the liquid’s molecules. If you look closely at the edge of the surface of water in a clear glass, the water appears to rise up the side of the glass because the surface tension of the water is actually pulling the water away from the glass inward toward the center of the surface. Since milk is mostly water, it has surface tension like water. Homogenized milk has gone through a process where the fat is broken up into tiny pieces of fat called globules and spread throughout the milk. When the food coloring was added to the milk, the fat globules were steady and undisturbed. Food coloring is less dense than milk, so it floats on the surface. When dish soap touches the surface of the milk, things begin to move. Dish detergent weakens the milk’s bonds by attaching to its fat molecules. As the dish soap diffuses into the solution it surrounds the fat globules in the milk. 

When you drop the soap into the center of the milk, it quickly spreads out toward the edges, because soap reduces the surface tension of water/milk. The active ingredient in dish soap is a class of chemicals called surfactants, which change the properties of the surface of a liquid, greatly reducing the surface tension. When the advancing surfactant ‘wave’ hits the colors, the surface tension relaxes and the drops of color can mix MUCH faster. The stronger surface tension of the surrounding liquid then pulls the surface away from the weak, soapy region. The food coloring moves with the surface, streaming away from the dish soap. This movement sets up currents on the top and bottom of the milk and forces the food coloring under the surface of the milk. The soap reduces the surface tension of the milk by dissolving the fat molecules. The interaction between the dish detergent and the fat in the milk causes turbulence in the bowl as the soap breaks down the fat in the milk. This rapidly mixing fat and dish soap movement causes the food coloring to swirl. The swirling food coloring shows what is happening in the milk allowing us to observe the invisible activity of how the surface of the milk moves and changes in response to the soap breaking up the fat in the milk. As the soap becomes evenly mixed with the milk, the action slows down and eventually stops. With the soap removed from the surface, surface tension returns to its original strength. Adding another drop of dish soap will start the process again and the experiment can be repeated. Eventually all of the fat globules in the milk will be surrounded by soap and some soap will remain on the surface causing surface tension movement to stop.

To learn more about chemistry checkout some of these great books:

Chemistry: Getting a Big Reaction by Dan Green

What’s Chemistry All About? by Alex Frith

Super Simple Chemistry: The Ultimate Bitesize Study Guide by N. Saunders

Perkin’s Perfect Purple: How a Boy Created Color with Chemistry

Real Chemistry Experiments: 40 Exciting STEAM Activities for Kids by Edward P. Zovinka

Resources Used:

• Babble Dabble Do

Join us on Wednesday, April 7th at 2 p.m. for a fun filled session of STEM Club, where we will learn even more about our solar system!

Our solar system consists of our star, the Sun, and everything bound to it by gravity — the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, dwarf planets such as Pluto, dozens of moons and millions of asteroids, comets and meteoroids. Beyond our own solar system, we have discovered thousands of planetary systems orbiting other stars in the Milky Way. Our planetary system is located in an outer spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy.

Why Is It Called The “Solar” System?

There are many planetary systems like ours in the universe, with planets orbiting a host star. Our planetary system is named the “solar” system because our Sun is named Sol, after the Latin word for Sun, “solis,” and anything related to the Sun we call “solar.”

There are more planets than stars in our galaxy. The current count orbiting our star: eight. The inner, rocky planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. The outer planets are gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, and ice giants, Uranus and Neptune.

Interesting Planet Facts:

What is a Planet?

This seemingly simple question doesn’t have a simple answer. Everyone knows that Earth, Mars and Jupiter are planets. But both Pluto and Ceres were once considered planets until new discoveries triggered scientific debate about how to best describe them—a vigorous debate that continues to this day. The most recent definition of a planet was adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 2006. It says a planet must do three things:

Discussion—and debate—will continue as our view of the cosmos continues to expand.

If you want to make a model of our solar system during STEM Club you will need the following:

To learn more about our solar system checkout some of these great books:

Dr. Maggie’s Grand Tour of the Solar System by Maggie Aderin-Pocock

Super Space Encyclopedia by Clive Gifford

The Know-Nonsense Guide to Space: An awesomely fun guide to the universe by Heidi Fiedler

Let’s Investigate with Nate: The Solar System by Nate Ball

Magic School Bus Presents: Our Solar System by Tom Jackson

Space Encyclopedia: A Tour of Our Solar System and Beyond by David A. Aguilar

Join us on Wednesday, March 3rd at 2 p.m. for a fun filled session of STEM Club, where we will learn even more about coding!

Basic programming has become an essential skill for grown-ups and children alike. The benefits of learning to code are huge: 

In our session on March 3rd, we will be using Code Combat to learn basic coding. To get ready, let’s learn some computer science vocabulary.

 There are many fun free websites that teach coding for children, here are a few of the best:

• Code.org
• Tynker
• Scratch
• Scratch Jr
• Code Monster
• Code Maven
• Make Block
• Swift Playgrounds (Only for Mac iOS)

To learn more about coding, checkout some of these great books:

Get Coding!: Learn HTML, CSS & JavaScript & Build a Website, App & Game by Young Rewired State

DK Find Out! Coding by James Floyd Kelly

My First Coding Book by Kiki Prottsman

Coding With ScratchJr by Adrienne Matteson

How Coding Works by Ben Hubbard

How to Be a Coder by Kiki Prottsman

Join us on Wednesday, February 3rd at 2 p.m. for a fun filled session of STEM Club where we will learn even more about music and fractions!

Before we talk about how music and fractions are related, let’s first cover some math and music vocabulary words.

Math Vocabulary:

Music Vocabulary:

Now that we know our vocabulary words, how are fractions related to music?  As you know, fractions are parts of a whole, such as a pie or a square, or a whole anything. In music, many notes are fractions of a whole note and these notes are distinguished based on the length of time they are played. So a whole note is a length of time; a half note is half that length of time, and so on. 

We’re going to work with fractions in rhythm. The most common rhythmic structure in the music we’re used to hearing is called 4-4 time. It’s also called common time because it’s…the most common! When a piece of music is in 4-4 time, it means there are four beats, or pulses, in each measure. A measure is a small section of a piece of music, just like an inch is a small section of a ruler or yardstick. Music is divided into measures, and measures are divided into beats.

We can think of one measure of music as a pizza, yes a pizza! 

• 1 whole note = 4 beats = 1 whole pizza
• 1 half note = 2 beats; 2 beats + 2 beats= 1 whole note (4 beats); 2 half notes = ½ pizza + ½ pizza= 1 whole pizza = 4 beats

• 1 quarter note = 1 beat; 4 quarter notes = 1 whole note (4 beats); ¼ + ¼ + ¼ + ¼ = 4/4= 1 whole pizza

• 1 eighth note = ½ beat; 2 eighth notes = 1 quarter note; 1/8 + 1/8 =2/8 = ¼;
  1/8 +1/8 + 1/8 +1/8 = 2 beats = 4/8 = 1 half note = 2 quarter notes;
  1/8 +1/8 + 1/8 +1/8 + 1/8 +1/8 + 1/8 +1/8 = 8/8 = 1 whole note = 1 pizza = 4 quarter notes = 2 half notes

Once you understand how each note or fraction helps add up to a whole pizza or a whole note in music you can start playing around and see how you can mix different notes/fractions to make a whole note.

Additional Resources:

• PBS Learning Media
• Math Engaged
• MathWorld
• Ducksters – Fractions

Join us on Wednesday, January 27th at 2 p.m. for a fun filled session of Advanced STEM Club where we will learn even more about object programming and get to do a fun project together! 

How can you program a robot to show emotion? 

To understand how to program emotional reactions in a robot, we first need to cover some programming concepts. Programs are sequences of instructions that, when followed, lead to something happening, like a robot showing different emotions. Computer instructions are really low-level codes. Programming languages use high-level commands to make programs easier to write – this uses abstraction to hide the detail of the low level codes. We can take a program of high level commands and compile it to a program that is used to actually operate the machine. Or we can use an interpreter that translates the instructions as we get to them.

Low-level Programming Language or Code

A low-level programming language or code is one that is made to be easily understood by the computer. They include machine code and assembly language, both of which instruct computer hardware components to carry out instructions directly. However, low-level programming languages are difficult to learn and time-consuming to code.

High-level Programming Language or Command

A high-level programming language or command is made to help human programmers communicate easily to the computer. These languages can have gentler learning curves and be very powerful. Good examples of high-level programming languages include C, Java, LISP, Smalltalk, PASCAL, LOGO, Visual Basic and Python. These languages are usually compiled, or converted into low-level programming languages so that they can be executed directly. The person who invented the concept of a compiler was Grace Hopper. A compiler converts high-level commands into low-level code for the computer, or in our case robot, to carry out. 

However, some programming languages are designed to be interpreted by another computer application, such as JavaScript, which is interpreted by web browsers which is interpreted by web servers.

An important subject in programming is abstraction. Abstraction is the process of hiding or ignoring detail so as to make something clearer. With our robot, we are using high-level commands to abstract the complexity of the low-level code. 

To participate in the session you will need the following supplies:

• Activity Worksheet
• Scissors
• Pencil or pen 

Additional Resources:

• Wikijunior
• Teaching London Computing – Video
• Teaching London Computing
• Can You Teach a Robot to Love? (Good for older students)
• PBS – NOVA

Join us on Wednesday January 6th at 2 p.m. for a fun filled session of the STEM Club where we will learn even more about sound and make our own musical instruments!

What is Sound? 

Sound is a vibration, or wave, that travels through matter (solid, liquid, or gas) and can be heard.

The following information comes from Ducksters: Basics of Sound and Ducksters: Pitch and Acoustics.

How does sound move or propagate? 

The vibration is started by some mechanical movement, such as someone plucking a guitar string or knocking on a door. This causes a vibration on the molecules next to the mechanical event (i.e. where your hand hit the door when knocking). When these molecules vibrate, they in turn cause the molecules around them to vibrate. The vibration will spread from molecule to molecule causing the sound to travel. Sound must travel through matter because it needs the vibration of molecules to propagate. The matter that transports the sound is called the medium.

Speed of Sound 

The speed of sound is how fast the wave or vibrations pass through the medium or matter. The type of matter has a large impact on the speed at which the sound will travel. For example, sound travels faster in water than air. Sound travels even faster in steel. In dry air, sound travels at 343 meters per second (768 mph). At this rate sound will travel one mile in around five seconds. Sound travels 4 times faster in water (1,482 meters per second) and around 13 times faster through steel (4,512 meters per second). 

Volume 

The volume of sound is the measure of loudness. To quantify volume we use decibels. The more decibels, the louder the sound is. A soft sound, like a whisper, will measure around 15-20 decibels. A loud sound like a jet engine is more like 150 decibels. The threshold of pain occurs at around 130 decibels. Loud sound can actually damage your ears and cause loss of hearing. Even sounds as loud as 85 decibels can ruin your ears if you listen to them over a long period of time. For this reason, it’s a good idea to not listen to loud music or have your headphones turned up too loud.

Pitch and Frequency 

An important measurement of sound is the frequency. This is how fast the sound wave is oscillating. This is different than how fast the wave travels through the medium. Frequency is measured in hertz. The faster the sound wave oscillates the higher pitch it will have. For example, on a guitar a big heavy string will vibrate slowly and create a low sound or pitch. A thinner lighter string will vibrate faster and create a high sound or pitch. 

In our STEM Club session on January 6th we’ll be learning even more about sound and make our own Membranophones!

 If you would like to participate you will need the following materials:

• Clean, empty plastic water bottle, any size (bottles with ridges work best)
• Scissors (for children) or utility knife (for adults only)
• Latex, rubber, or vinyl glove (or a balloon, although it’s harder to work with)
• Rubber band
• Hole punch
• Drinking straw
• Sheet of construction paper (card stock works too)

Want to learn more about the science of sound, checkout some of these great books:

Physics in Your Everyday Life by Richard Gaughan

Sound by Grace Hansen

Sound by Cody Crane

Science of Music: Discovering Sound by Karen Kenney

Audio Engineering and the Science of Soundwaves by Anne Rooney

Additional Resources:

• DK Find Out  
• Ducksters: Sound Waves  
• Kids Discover 
• NASA Space Place 
• KnowItAll.Org 
• Kiddle 

Videos

• Bill Nye 
• SciShow Kids  
• Study.com 
• The Dr. Binocs Show 
• Kids Health – How the Ear Works 

Where did paper come from? 

The following information comes from Wonderopolis and Kiddle.

What comes to mind when you think of technology? Many kids might picture flying cars or space shuttles. Others might think of today’s smart devices. It’s easy to think technology only includes advanced electronic devices. But technology is much more than that. It includes any object created to solve a problem. Many simple tools are examples of technology. Did you know that the wheel is technology? How about pencils? Scissors? Even paper is an example of technology! 

What problem did paper solve? Well, human beings were writing for thousands of years before paper existed. Early writers used many materials. Many of these made writing difficult. Some people carved words on clay or stone tablets. Others wrote on silk, which was very costly. 

Many centuries ago – as early as the 3rd millennium BC (that’s over 2000 BC) – people in Egypt made a kind of paper from the papyrus plant. This is where the word ‘paper’ comes from. The people of Greece and Rome learned to do this too. The Romans wrote on parchment made from animal skin, on waxed tablets, and on wood. In China, ancient people wrote on long bamboo strips that they tied together to make books that were very heavy.  

This was a problem. In 105 CE, a man named Cai Lun came up with a solution. He was a Chinese court official who often used bamboo for writing and reading. He knew how inconvenient it was and set out to find a better way.

The material used in this ancient paper included cotton rags, hemp, various plant fibres and old fish nets. The oldest existing paper with writing on it was found in the ruins of a watchtower in the Great Wall of China. It dates to about 150 AD. Even earlier paper, but with no writing on it, has also been found in China. Paper-making was regarded by the Chinese as so valuable that they kept it secret as long as they could.

Eventually, paper also spread to central Asia and the Middle East in the 7th Century. Later, it made it to Europe, though it’s unclear how. Middle Eastern traders may have brought it there. Another theory is that Marco Polo brought paper from China.

Paper has changed a lot since 105 CE. Today, paper is made almost entirely from trees. It comes in many forms and colors, and it serves a number of purposes.

In our STEM Club session on December 2nd, we’ll be learning even more about the history of paper and how to make our own! If you would like to participate, you will need the following materials:

Additional Resources:

• Britannica Kids
• Britannica Student
• Wonderopolis – Making Paper
• eHow
• Instructables

What is an Archimedean Solid? – The following information is from Brittanica Kids with a few definitions added. 

In geometry, the Archimedean solids are a special group of 13 semi-regular polyhedrons. They have a high degree of symmetry. A polyhedron is a geometric solid (three-dimensional shape) whose faces are each flat polygons. A polygon is a plane shape (two-dimensional) with straight sides such as a triangle, square, or octagon. In an Archimedean solid, the faces are regular polygons—that is, their sides are all of equal length. Additionally, an Archimedean solid has faces of two or more different types of regular polygons, such as squares and triangles. The vertices, or corners, of an Archimedean solid are all alike meaning that they are all the same angles. An Archimedean solid can be placed inside a sphere so that every vertex touches the surface of the sphere.

The ancient Greek philosopher Archimedes first described such solids. However, his works on the subject were lost and known only through other writers such as Pappus of Alexandria. Renaissance artists rediscovered several of the Archimedean solids. The Renaissance was a period in European history covering the 15th – 17th centuries (1400-1700). In 1619 the German mathematician and astronomer Johannes Kepler reconstructed the entire set of 13 and gave them Latin names.

Plato, who lived about a century before Archimedes, had described five regular solids in which all the faces are identical regular polyhedrons. These solids, now called the Platonic solids, are the tetrahedron, the cube, the octahedron, the dodecahedron, and the icosahedron. Some of the Archimedean solids can be thought of as variations on the Platonic solids. For example, if one starts with a cube and slices off each corner, leaving an equilateral triangle at each of the eight former corners and a regular octagon (eight-sided figure) in place of the former faces of the cube, the result is a solid with 14 faces: eight triangles and six octagons. Each vertex of the new solid brings together one of the triangles and two of the octagons. This Archimedean solid is called a truncated cube.

If one repeats the procedure but slices off the corners of the cube more deeply, so the triangles meet and only a much smaller square remains on each of the former faces of the cube, the faces of the resulting figure are eight triangles and six squares. Two triangles and two squares meet at each vertex. This is called a cuboctahedron.

Archimedean and Platonic solids are used in various kinds of modern construction such as geodesic domes because their shapes are quite stable. Most soccer balls are spherical variations on a truncated icosahedron, made up of pentagons and hexagons, with one pentagon and two hexagons meeting at each vertex.

The following is a listing of all Archimedean solids from Kiddle: 

To learn even more about Archimedean Solids join us on November 25th for Advanced STEM Club where we will be making our own paper Archimedean Solids.

Materials:

Additional Resources:

• Wonderopolis
• Smithsonian Institute
• Math Is Fun
• Kiddle
• Polyhedra
• Cool Maths with Magformers 1 (Video)
• Magformers Maths Education: Making Archimedean Solids (Video)

NATIONAL S.T.E.M./S.T.E.A.M. DAY – November 8

So let’s celebrate and create and have fun with STEM/STEAM projects!

• 5 Ways to Celebrate National  STEM/STEAM Day
• Celebrating National STEM(&STEAM) Day
• Simple STEM Activities for Kids
• Activities/Siemens STEM Day
• 50+ Genius STEAM Activities for Kids

STEM lab : 25 super cool projects : build, invent, create, discover by Jack Challoner

Star Wars maker lab by Liz Heinecke

Oh, ick! : 114 science experiments guaranteed to gross you out! by Joy Masoff

101 great science experiments by Neil Ardley

365 simple science experiments with everyday materials by Richard E. Churchill

Science experiments you can eat by Vicki Cobb