HCLS STEAM Carnival 2019

The Howard County Library System hosted its HiTech STEAM Carnival at their East Columbia Branch this year (2019 for all you far future readers). STEAM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics. The library sponsors lots of HiTech classes for students during the summer. Many of their projects were on display at the carnival, showing how science and math applies to everyday activities, especially fun summer festivities.

East Columbia Branch of the library

The carnival was more impressive than it looks here

Our first activity was riding on a miniature train that drove around the carnival. It was fun and relaxing and required very little effort on our part, mostly waving to the attendees as we passed by.

Train

A fun ride

A large catapult let kids hurl dodge balls faster and higher than ever before! It demonstrated force, inertia, and trajectory. It also made for nice videos...



A basketball-like challenge had my kids tossing different balls (beach balls, basket balls, etc.) into a high and wide net. The difference of weight made it trickier than we thought it would be.

She shoots, she scores!

A nearby arcade featured old-fashioned games like Pac-Man with controllers created by students.

This invisible Pac-Man is really hard!

The other arcade attraction was the classic carnival racing game. Players had to roll a ball into a hole to move their horse forward. The ball rolled back to a return and had to be sunk again to keep the horse going. Eight or ten successful sinks into holes meant victory.

Horse racing!

Another classic carnival game is hitting ducks. Normally players throw a baseball or something of the sort. This game had a twist--players flew drones to knock down a duck. Using a keyboard to control the drone was a challenging but my kids soon got the hang of it.

Flying a drone

Hoping to crash!

A racetrack was set up for remote control cars built by students. Players tried for fastest times or raced each other (which I guess is a variant of "fastest time" racing).

Ten80 Car Race

The biological sciences were also represented...by worms! One display had kids digging in dirt to find different kinds of worms. Worms are great because they are a key component of the bio-degrading process.

I gotta find what?

Starting to search

Found one

A jar of black swallowtail caterpillars

What child can resist this sign?

One not very scientific activity (but very fun) was an inflatable golf course. My kids played through six holes.

Starting off

Waiting for her turn

Another exercise of practical physics was corn hole.

Concentrating on his selection 

Getting down to business

The carnival also had food on offer. The kids got slushies from the Kona Ice truck while my wife and I split a muffin from a bakery.

Relaxing in the shade

The students also made a fun skee-ball game with golf balls. This game was another one that took some practice before it became easier to get the ball in the hole.

Go ball, go!

Catching air

Catching more air

My youngest did the periodic table challenge. Kids drew a card with one of the elements listed on it and then tried to throw a bean bag onto that element on a giant periodic table.

Getting tickets for success

Next door was a pinball game created by library students.

Fighting on the side of the Avengers

Across the way, a rollercoaster let children see how kinetic energy is used to send the cars flying around the track at breakneck speeds.

The roller coaster

My youngest wrapped up his day by playing a giant chess game. He teamed up with another random boy to play against an older and more experienced player. Sadly, they did not win.

Giant chess

My other two children wrapped up their day by turning in their tickets to make slime out of glue and borax (and some food coloring).

Paste to slime in little time

The carnival was a lot of fun and we'd go back again. Hopefully there will be another one next summer!