The Bridgewater Raritan-High School robotics club, Team 303 or the T.E.S.T. Team, served as the host to the STEAM Century Fair and Sensory Fair on December 9.
As part of the event, all members of the robotics created science fair-style presentations on various STEAM topics, targeted at an elementary school audience.
The STEAM Fair was held in the high school’s main cafeteria and the Sensory Fair was exhibited in the small cafeteria.
In preparation, each Team 303 member had to find a partner to collaborate with, and then choose an idea for the STEAM Fair. They could either submit one to be approved or choose one from a pre-selected list.
The groups had to make a tri-fold presentation on the topic they chose, as well as create over a hundred “takeaways” for the elementary schoolers attending to take home. These ranged from extra practice packets to stickers or tinfoil boats.
Members were also highly encouraged to help the team officers set up all the logistics the day before the event in addition to preparing their own stalls the day of the event.
By 11 a.m., the start time of the event, there were over thirty stalls in the small cafeteria of the high school. Some of the presentations included aluminum foil boats, buoyancy, paper helicopters, catapults, origami, paper airplanes and Rubix cube solving.
In addition to individual stalls, the robotics team hosted hourly demonstrations for all fair attendees. These included an elephant toothpaste experiment (elephant toothpaste is a rapidly expanding foamy substance created through a chemical reaction), popsicle bombs, a small engineering structure with wooden dowels, as well as one where kids were encouraged to guess how many rubber bands a watermelon could take before exploding.
Throughout the whole fair, the team was running various demonstrations of the abilities of their robot.
Freshman Kush Dave, on Team 303’s CAD subteam, shared his experience preparing for the event.
“It was tons of fun preparing the project and seeing the younger students learn and explore the concepts displayed at the fair. Preparing was mostly a seamless process with a few small issues,” Dave said. “I will definitely be doing this again next year.”
Aarav Sureban, captain of the team side of operations, also shared his thoughts on the turnout of the event.
“We’re really glad that the STEAM Fair had a lot of traction this year, with over thirty booths and 200 attendees. Team 303 hopes to create a positive impact on the BR community through events such as this one,” Sureban said.
Team 303 holds several STEAM-related events throughout the year. These include the Sensory Fair, which is similar to the STEAM Fair, but tailored towards children with physical or developmental disabilities.
Another example would be STEAM week, in which team members host various activities after school for elementary schoolers. Each day of the week is dedicated to one of the concepts of STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics).
This year, Team 303 hopes to create more STEAM-related events to increase its impact on the Bridgewater-Raritan community, as well as refine and improve its existing ones.
