Pop Fly!

 

For the first week of After School To-Go, students designed catapults and started the year off with a pop! Students were excited to get the ping pong balls flying. Before brainstorming their catapult designs, girls talked about their expectations and excitement for the new semester of Girlstart. Students went over the Engineering Design Process – a set of never-ending, always-improving steps that include asking questions, brainstorming and researching the possibilities, building a prototype, testing the design, and revising.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the catapult, girls learned about levers. Levers are simple machines which make work easier by utilizing pivot points to convert a small amount of input into a lot of movement! Using this knowledge, the students got to work designing and planning their catapult prototypes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then it was time to test their catapults! Each catapult launched a ping pong ball, and girls evaluated the success of their designs and made adjustments. After School To-Go is flying into this fall semester and even more exciting activities are to come!