STEM Club advisor Michael Warholak and BHS science teacher Matt Giordano watch test flights of missiles constructed from paper straws and trajected by an air piston.
BLOOMFIELD, NJ — Twenty schools from the NJ Interscholastic STEM League participated in a competition held at Bloomfield High School on Thursday, Feb. 22. It was quite a showing with five students per team working at cluttered tables while teachers and curious STEM judges roamed. The event was held in the first-floor gym called the Pit.
STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Many community- and school-based organization have sprung up to make these four disciplines a combined activity for students. Toy-like prototypes of every sort of advanced engineering feat are constructed and tested — for example, the torque of a twisted rubber band against inertia is a STEM project.
There are 30 schools in the STEM league that has been growing by leaps and bounds since its four-school inception in 2014. BHS is one of the founding schools that include Northern Highlands, Old Tappan and Waldwick high schools.
Last year at this time, a Bloomfield-hosted STEM competition drew only a smattering of participants because of a conflict with PARCC testing. A disappointed BHS STEM Club advisor Michael Warholak vowed a significant turnout for the next competition the school hosted and he was right.
Warholak said the Feb. 22 competition was one of the biggest ever staged and it gave many schools with conflicting academic testing schedules the opportunity to meet head-on. There are other problems, too.
“The logistics of planning these interscholastic collaborations are becoming a nightmare due to the many restrictions we face today, including the increased security restrictions currently in place and getting tighter,” he said in an email earlier this week.
Competing teams do not know what will be required of them when they come to a competition. They arrive, are given the same assignment, a handful of common objects, and told to go to it.
Last week, the teams were given the problem of designing and constructing a missile that was to be trajected with and without a payload. The goal was to make the missile with the payload land where it did without the payload. The Pit had an area cordoned off as a test site. It was demonstrated by the various flights that gravity was a big problem for a missile carrying a payload.
But STEM projects are also expected to be relevant to everyday life.
The BHS STEM Club has built a workable prosthetic arm. Last year, at the PARCC-truncated STEM competition, the model of a building able to withstand an earthquake was to be erected from Leggo parts, styrofoam, plastic straws and like components. It was tested on a spring-mounted board.
This year, the missile was a straw, a Leggo was the payload, and paper fins were mounted to stabilize the flight. The missiles were launched by an air piston that could be calibrated to control the distance and speed at which a missile took flight.
In previous STEM competitions at BHS, team members brought their projects to a panel of judges from the engineering community who questioned them about the decisions they made. Warholak said for this year’s competition, that was abandoned because of the high number of schools competing. So, the judges made the rounds from table to table. They also visited the testing area.
One of the judges, Sunny Mullen, who works with an engineering consulting firm, said the judges wanted to know if the students understood the concepts behind the projects and how the students solved problems.
Worksheets and design documents were also reviewed by the judges. Mullen said the goal of the missile launches, with and without the payloads, was accuracy, distance and consistency.
The outgoing president of the STEM league, Waldwick High School teacher Jim Dreschsel, had some parting comments. He said the first STEM event four years ago had only four teams, but many educators and administrators from non-participating schools came to find out what STEM was all about.
“Now there are 30 schools in the league,” he said. “Schools are encouraged to host an event. People are apprehensive, but there’s a huge reward for hosting.”
The huge reward, he said, is when the administrators for the host school see for themselves what is going on and become advocates for STEM activities, earmarking funds to help sustain the clubs.
“There are 20 schools in this competition,” he said. “It had to be capped.”
BHS finished out of the running at the competition, with Leonia and Westwood high schools tied for first. Although a trophy is nice, Warholak said the purpose of the competitions is to gauge improvements of STEM reasoning by his students.
“They’re all winners,” he said.
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