STEMVillage Summer Camp – Week 1, Day 2 Highlights

Campers started the day building and launching their own bottle rockets—a hands-on exploration of aerodynamics, thrust, and the basics of aerospace engineering. Students experimented with water pressure, fin design, and launch angles to see what would send their rockets the farthest. The excitement of a successful launch brought cheers and real-time learning.

Next, students engineered paper airplanes and tested them with rubber band launchers to better understand elastic potential energy, lift, and drag. As they adjusted their designs and techniques, they saw how small changes in shape and tension impacted distance and flight stability. It was a creative and competitive session, with teams refining their flyers for maximum performance.

In the afternoon, we wrapped up with one of the campers’ favorite activities—building light sabers. While the designs were fun and colorful, the lesson focused on light diffraction and the ways science appears in everyday life and popular culture—including Star Wars. It was a perfect mix of science and storytelling that encouraged campers to see STEM in new and imaginative ways.