NORTHFIELD — Families shuffled from classroom to classroom at Pioneer Valley Regional School Tuesday as students gave their parents and the public a taste of what they have learned in their science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics-based classes (collectively referred to as STEAM).
According to Pioneer science teacher Nikki Pullen, STEAM Night has been held for roughly six years, but it wasn’t always held under this title. It began as “Sustainability Night,” but her science classes didn’t fit under the umbrella of that title. To expand participation, it was temporarily dubbed “Science Night” before growing again to become “STEAM Night” in the past two years.
Students in Pullen’s anatomy lab sifted through owl pellets and dissected mink specimens on Tuesday evening. Younger students searched the owl pellets, a mass of undigested parts of a bird’s food that is regurgitated for mouse bones and other materials.
“We’re studying the muscular system in class right now,” noted Pioneer junior Paige Laughman. One mink was labeled to show the names of the various muscles.
Over in the Innovation Center, Dr. John Heffernan, who teachers engineering design and digital arts courses, was supervising various projects. Students in the high school engineering class showed their programming abilities in a LEGO robotics “space mission.” Heffernan explained that students needed to program the robots to distinguish the “rock” pieces from others on the table and collect them.
Intro to Engineering Design students Kylie Boudreau and Amelia Fowler-Shaw, both seventh-graders, were preparing to test their small-scale bridge designs. The bridges were made from nothing but 30 pieces of uncooked spaghetti and a single hot glue gun stick.
“It took about three-weeks,” Fowler-Shaw said. “We spent a couple days planning. Then we saw what didn’t work and tried to improve it.”
Students placed their bridge between two tables, attached a reusable grocery bag to the bottom with fishing wire and tested how many water bottles they could hold. Boudreau used a triangular truss design, and said she hoped to hold at least six water bottles.
“A triangle is the strongest shape,” Boudreau said, “because it more evenly distributes the weight.”
“A square is more likely to collapse in on itself,” Fowler-Shaw added.
Digital Arts student Brennan Killay, a junior, showcased his original two-minute animated video “Lighting the Bruse” on a large screen in the Innovation Center. He said he spent at least 30 minutes a day working on the project for weeks on end, totaling hundreds of hours. The video follows a cat enjoying a simple day when an unwanted “stock” character — who Killay said is intentionally “bland” — interrupts the cat’s day, causing the cat to lose his temper.
“It took some re-editing and adjustments, but I feel proud of it,” Killay said. “I adore the medium.”
Across the hall, art teacher Tracy Derrig helped students work with film cameras and develop photos throughout the night. Pioneer is the last public high school in Franklin County to have an operating dark room, she said.
Over in the cafeteria, Emergency Medical Preparedness teacher Ernest Abramian had a station where students could showcase their suturing abilities, sewing a faux wound closed on a rubber sheet that emulates human skin. With the supervision of paramedic Erik Davidson, students also conducted internal bleeding assessment exercises and walked through how to stabilize patients on an EMS training dummy. Davidson also walked parents and students through information from the national Stop the Bleed program.
Physics and chemistry teacher Carol Sacco supervised as students repeatedly set up and set off their Rube Goldberg machines, tinkering as needed. She said students spent roughly two weeks designing and building them. The machines go through a lengthy series of events to trigger a simple task, like setting off a buzzer or springing an actual mouse trap to launch a ping pong ball. Students were encouraged to incorporate as many features as possible to make the system lengthy and entertaining.
“The real purpose is to see how energy transfers through the system,” Sacco said.
Pioneer senior Dylan Carmody explained one element of his machine — sending a model car down a slope via a Hot Wheels track — transferred potential energy to kinetic (moving) energy. Meanwhile, Dylan’s brother, junior Nolan Carmody, and senior Jordin Hubbard worked on their own machine that began with a wheel spinning around a pole like a tetherball, knocking into dominoes.
Zack DeLuca can be reached at zdeluca@recorder.com or 413-930-4579.