Sanfordville students take a trip to the WVHS STEM Museum

Sanfordville Elementary students in the PIE 3-4 program were both educated and entertained while visiting a one-day-only STEM Museum hosted by students in Lisa Howard’s AP Calculus class at the Warwick Valley High School library on Friday.

The museum featured five science-based exhibits for the elementary students to explore that included fun components like cookie tasting, foam explosions, catapults, boat races and props that demonstrated the laws of physics happening in real time. 

One exhibit provided students with a cookie tasting chemistry lesson where students sampled eight different chocolate chip cookie recipes, each containing different variations of core baking ingredients. Students rated each cookie on a scale of 1-10, learning about the effects of fats, flours and leavening agents in baking.

Another engaging activity was the “elephant toothpaste” experiment, which introduced students to the concept of catalysts. After selecting the color dye of their choice, students combined hydrogen peroxide, liquid dish soap and yeast, watching in amazement as a foamy eruption took place. 

The fun continued with popsicle stick catapults, where students constructed their own catapults using rubber bands, popsicle sticks and plastic spoons to launch pom-pom balls onto a target. This hands-on project provided a practical lesson in projectile physics with a candy prize for making it in the ring.

Another demonstration educated students about the principles of motion with soap-powered boats. They watched as the interaction between soap and water created waves to propel cardboard boats forward, and witnessed how a drop of dish soap could disperse pepper resting at the bottom on a water-filled tin. 

The final exhibit was an interactive physics journey on momentum that tied the event together, featuring real-life examples such as a spinning bike tire and swinging pendulum balls, illustrating the relationship between momentum, mass and velocity.

Sanfordville students left the WVHS STEM Museum feeling excited about science and its real-world applications.