Day 3 & Day 4 of STEM

K - Potassium! Just a bit of humor to start the night. Yesterday, was a long day - but so informative.

DAY THREE reflection: (Since it didn't post last night!)

First, we learned all about Extremophiles - which are just awesome little bacteria that can survive in EXTREME conditions. These little bacteria literally just appear where needed - when they no longer have a food source, they "disappear."

Now, other than what they eat, why are they important? They can help break down Biomass - basically anything, but really think of the use of switch grass, corn stalks, and other materials that are SUPER hard to break down into basic sugars. This stuff is usually waste - we can't use it.  Extremophiles can actually make this stuff usable - that is AMAZING - and turn these products into bio-fuel (and hydrogen as a byproduct).

So - this means that we all could literally use our own biomass to create fuel! THAT is amazing! Imagine not needing to go to a gas station in the future.

The other NIFTY part of extremophiles - because they appear and eat toxic (not toxic to them, however) substances, they can be used to reclaim water. The Homestake Mining process polluted the water - the off chance of trying bacteria colonies to eat all the "junk" ends up making the water safe. The Water Treatment plant even noticed that bacteria level themselves to what is in the water - a diesel bacteria colony rose up and ate up all the diesel.

That night, we wrote our cross-curricular lesson plans (with LOTS of LAUGHS)!

DAY FOUR!

Today, we learned about Engineering.

Did you know, playdough can be made into a circuit conductor? I found that pretty sweet.

Additionally, I learned all about the different ways you can analyze the rocks to actually be able to create the Underground labs.  They then take all the information and create digitized models of how to build it. This portion of the program was pretty interesting.

We also built magnetic fields, which was fun. I can see the other lab we did, making magnet accelerators, as a way to tie the information into US History and the development of different weapons.

We also learned about a really interesting project funded by South Dakota to create C13 in a new form - and massively cheaper! (Oh, and art history was a good choice to take - because the Chillers figured out how to coat the lead bricks in paraffin to keep the lead from getting pours that collect radon.)

Moreover, I learned the differences between linear accelerators and cyclotrons.

Finally, we learned about underground climate when Steve G. shared his research and challenges he faces in writing code and getting down to maintain his equipment.