creativity

Red Bull Soap Box Derby

~ hsiaochingchou ~ Leave a comment

We went to the Red Bull Soap Box Derby, which was held (Aug. 23, 2014) downtown on Yesler Way. The course was deemed the steepest Red Bull has ever used. A bit of trivia: the base of Yesler Way used to be known as “Skid Road” because of how logs would skid down the road for the lumber mill.

Soap Box Course

I was hoping to inspire the kids to want to learn about how soap box cars are constructed. They were indeed enamored by the concept of these cars. Alas, the crowds and long wait time for the races to start diminished some of their enthusiasm. But the experience will serve as a good reference point the next time we come across some materials we can transform into a rudimentary car.

There were some preliminary runs to test the course. The Seahawks mascot, Blitz, took the first run. We were able to wedge ourselves into a small opening in the crowd on the upper course, so all we could see was two seconds of the teams as they zipped by.

Blitz Runs Course

Derby test run

We discovered later that Red Bull had set up large monitors so people could watch the races — it was easier to see the teams run the entire course via the monitors.

Derby monitor

Red Bull posted a few photos from the event. We hope to check out the next Standwood Camano Island Soap Box Derby, which is part of the All-American Soap Box Derby series of events.

Water Balloon Experiment

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“We’re doing an experiment.”
“What’s the experiment?”
“We’re trying to make the water leak out without destroying the bag.”
“And how are you going to do that?”
“By hitting or punching it or doing some massive destruction without popping it.”
“And, how’s it going?”
“The result was that we couldn’t really get the water to come out of the bag without damaging it.”

Water Balloon Experiment 1

Water Balloon Experiment 3

 

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Water Balloon Experiment 7

Water Balloon Experiment 8

Engineering a Puff Mobile

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Meilee competed in the Puff Mobile competition at school. She had to make a “car” using straws, Life Savers, paper clips, tape and material for a sail (cling wrap). She won the first round to advance to the second round but didn’t make it past that. Then we celebrated with frozen yogurt.

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Research: Spatial Ability Indicates Creativity – aka Buy More LEGOs

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Do you have LEGO blocks everywhere in your house like we do? If my son could read, he would be waving this July 15 New York Times article about a recent study on how spatial ability can be a better indicator of a child’s future creativity and innovation than math and verbal skills. From the article:

Cognitive psychologists have long suspected that spatial ability — sometimes referred to as the “orphan ability” for its tendency to go undetected — is key to success in technical fields. Earlier studies have shown that students with a high spatial aptitude are not only overrepresented in those fields, but may receive little guidance in high school and underachieve as a result. (Note to parents: Legos and chemistry sets are considered good gifts for the spatial relations set.)

We have more pieces of LEGO than we can count, especially after my mother-in-law brought over a box of my husband’s bricks she had saved from when he was a child. It’s only July, but Shen has started to ask for a Star Wars LEGO set for Christmas.

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But given this study, which was published on July 15 in the journal Psychological Science, I’d rather get one of the LEGO education sets. If you visit the LEGO education site, you will see sets that focus on science, design and technology and are categorized by school-age group. I have my eye on the Early Simple Machines set, which offers these learning objectives:

  • Exploring basic mechanical principles such as gears, levers, pulleys, wheels and axles
  • Investigating force, buoyancy and balance
  • Solving problems through design

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It’s not cheap, though. One listing on Amazon.com shows the cost is $128. Ouch. It looks like I need to spend some time on Ebay and Craigslist.

Full NYT article

LEGO Education