HAL5 at 2014 and 2015 STEAMFest at Lowe Mill
STEAMFest 2014 and 2015 were hosted by Huntsville City Schools and Lowe Mill.
First Annual STEAMFest: April 12, 2014
STEAMFest celebrates the STEM education curriculum (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) with an emphasis on how those subjects are used in visual, creative, and performing arts. Coincidently, the inaugural event landed on April 12. April 12 is also known as Yuri's Night which celebrates the anniversary of the first human in space (Yuri Gagarin of Russia) on April 12, 1961, and the first launch of the STS-1, Space Shuttle Columbia, on April 12, 1983. For this inaugural event, HAL5 did not brought much of our outreach materials and gadgets. We demonstrated, live firing of, Dynetic's hydrogen and oxygen thruster that was designed for the Bigelow Aerospace's inflatable space station, and two types suitcase hybrid rockets (one from Dynetic and one made by HAL5).
STEAMFest 2.0: April 18, 2015
Estote Parati
The second annual STEAMFest returned to Lowe Mill. This time, we were prepared.
This was HAL5’s second appearance.
We brought out our Martian popsicle sticks catapult activity that was introduced in 2014 as
part of our Arts Huntsville
Panoply Arts Festival STEAM Interactive activity. The Arts aspect of our activity is the
visual and creative use of ‘catapult items’ and making the catapults.
The Mars theme backdrop featured painted on clear plastic cups and an astronaut geologist with a bunch of Martian bugs. The objective was to shoot various objects, such as beans, cotton balls, and dry pasta, into the aforementioned cups using the catapult. The idea is to investigate small items that have different shapes and mass, and to study the accuracy. HAL5 had two tents there. One (blue) is where we make the catapults and the second one (white) is the test area. David Hewitt (HAL5 Education Outreach chair), also brought out Dynetics’ suitcase hydrogen/oxygen thruster that they made for Biglow Aerospace for demonstration.
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