GLEN RIDGE, NJ — Glen Ridge First, a non-profit, volunteer organization dedicated to advancing STEM activities among Glen Ridge students, held its third-annual festival on Saturday, April 2, at the Glen Ridge Women’s Club. According to Yin Chang-D’Arcy, chairwoman of group, the event was attended by 670 people and had over 20 exhibitors.
STEM is an acronym for science, technology, engineering and mathematics and the activities of these disciplines can mean practically anything. At the Women’s Club, the Northeast New Jersey Beekeepers Association sent beekeepers.
“They’re part of science,” Chang-D’Arcy said in a telephone interview.
There was also a medical doctor who spoke about spinal health and gave out key chains attached to a small, plastic spines. An exhibitor showed three-dimensional printing and another who had a ham radio operator display were also part of the event.
The all-encompassing approach of STEM is the philosophy of Glen Ridge First. Chang-D’Arcy said her group changed the “M” in “STEM” from “mathematics” to “maker.”
“We’re saying S—T— E—Maker,” she said. “‘Maker’ is a more popular way of looking at it. It’s all math.”
Exhibitors came from as far away as Philadelphia. But there was a group from New Jersey called Gardenslug. The last three letters of Gardenslug stand for “Lego User Group,” a phrase which is used internationally by adult Lego groups.
“It’s a play on words,” said the club vice-president, Andy Page. “There’s lots of ‘lugs’ around.”
But Gardenslug, according to Page, is the only adult Lego group in New Jersey which is authorized by the Lego company to be an official Lug.
“We do about 10 shows a year,” he said.
Page exhibited a robotic glockenspiel which he had made. It was pretty complicated how he got it to play a tune and, somewhat ironically in a computerized world, still required careful hand manipulation to get the instrument to play right.
A key component to programming the computer was that the notes of the simple tune were played one-fifth of a second apart. A gear attached to the carriage transporting a mallet along the side of the instrument would be rotated to move the mallet to the next bar to be struck. Of course, the striking would produce the sound of a musical note.
A momentary pause by the programmer, and the computer would record this pause as the command for where the carriage should stop and the mallet should strike. As the programmer continued to move the carriage and the mallet from one note to the next, the computer would record each separate rotation of the gear as the distance between each musical note and when the mallet should strike. The computer program was called Python, Page said.
The Glen Ridge High School Robotics Club was at the festival. Two teams of students, freshmen-sophomores and juniors-seniors, built two robots. The challenge for the robots, called RES-Q, was to clear an area of the floor of debris by pushing it into a designated area. According to Myra Bachrach, a GRHS science teacher and an advisor to the club, the high school team made the regionals but not the state-level competition. Bachrach said the club is going through a rebuilding year.
The Glen Ridge Public Library was on hand.
“They used a binary craft,” Chang-D’Arcy said. “Using the numerals zero and one, they showed how a binary code worked.”
Planning for the festival took a couple of hundred hours, she said. “I do this for the kids,” Chang-D’Arcy said. “They love it. Kids get to talk to real-world people. Case in point: Honey bees are harmless.”
The event was especially popular with the younger children. But in the future, Glen Ridge First will target middle school students.
But while STEM can include many things, Chang-D’Arcy said it will not include art, a subject that other STEM organizers are embracing as art studies begin to reappear in school curriculums. The STEM acronym for these educators, with an “A” for art included, is STEAM.
“Nope,” Chang-D’Arcy said to STEAM. “Whatever you call it, it’s the same thing. Architecture is a perfect example of how art, engineering and math come together. But it doesn’t change STEM to STEAM.”
Proceeds from the event will support STEM camps sponsored by Glen Ridge First. A one-week camp is planned this summer at Ridgewood Avenue School. Chang-D’Arcy said the event was a success in getting children interested in the various ways science, technology, engineering, and making, are a part of everyday life.
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