FORT RUCKER, Ala. (June 26, 2015) -- While many teens are using their summer vacations to sleep in, hang out with friends or generally goof off, others are using their time to be productive and get a leg up in life through a Fort Rucker program.
The U.S. Army Aeromedical Research Laboratory held its first sessions of the Gains in the Education of Mathematics and Science program June 1-26. The program is designed to challenge young minds and give students hands-on, interactive learning through experiments that focus on the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math curriculum, according to Anna Clay, GEMS medical module resource teacher.
The program is great for giving students an advantage in learning, she said.
"I think GEMS is more fun than being in a regular classroom because the students get more completely engaged in the activities they're doing," said Clay.
During the program's first sessions, students got the opportunity participate in two different GEMS sessions: robotics and medical.
In the robotics portion, students learned about programming and how robotics is used today, as well as how they will shape the future. They also got the chance to program their own robots and put them to work.
"During the program, they had to program LEGO robots, and they used light sensors and programmed them to find the threshold between white paper and black tape," said Jacob von Eschenbach, assistant GEMS mentor. "The idea is that they are in a driveway and they have to program the robot to turn based on whichever route they choose to move into the garage. They calculated the circumference of the wheels to find out how far it was they needed their robot to travel. They then had to program how man rotations the wheels needed to travel the distance provided -- it had to be precise."
For most of the students, like Morgan Young and Trey Lockhart, the programming was the most difficult part of the program, but despite the difficulties, it didn't avert their appetite to learn the process.
"There was a lot of trial and error throughout the process -- going back to change a lot of the measurements if it wasn't working at first," said Young. "You definitely need to know how to use a computer, but I like to learn about everything and anything new."
"The programming was pretty difficult," added Lockhart, who traveled from Huntsville to participate in the program. "We needed to measure the flooring and see how long our rotations of the wheel had to be. This taught me how precise programming has to be and how much you have to learn to be able to make the robots perform."
This was Young's second year attending the GEMS program and Lockhart's first, but both said the program was well worth the effort they put into it.
"I've always wanted to be an engineer because my father was an engineer, so I've always wanted to build things and help the world by doing things like building bridges," said the Huntsville native. "I started to think that if I want to become a civil engineer, then I have to get an early start, so my mom started looking for programs like this and we found GEMS."
For students like Lockhart, GEMS is one way to get a head start on a career path in the STEM field and von Eschenbach believes the program does just that.
"I think GEMS is a good opportunity to inspire kids in the local area and future generations," he said. "American industry (wants) more engineers, more scientists, more doctors, and I think this is a great way to start them out on the right track and inspire them, and hopefully they'll pick up the interest."
Robotics wasn't the only career lane that students were exposed to. They were also introduced to the medical side of science.
During medical GEMS, students started off with a focus on vital signs and performed experiments to test each vital sign, such as measuring heart rate response to certain stimuli. Also, throughout the week, various medical professionals were available to speak to the students about the medical profession, and students even got the opportunity to dissect a dogfish shark, a frog and a pig heart.
It's that hands-on learning that Clay said is a big part of the success of the program.
"I love the interaction with the students and I love watching them explore things they didn't know beforehand. This is great preparation for college because they get some real-world career advice (through the program)," she said.
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