On Saturday April 23, 2022, the team of Katherina Elston, Gianna Perry, and Leslie Prieto competed in the NEPA Girls in STEM competition at Valley View High School. The team was tasked in completing challenges in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. In the science event the team learned about the chemistry of bath bombs and measured the dissolve time of different formulas. The technology portion of the competition asked students to code using Scratch programming. Mathematic puzzles were given in a timed portion of the competition. The competition was capped off with the team building a Rube Goldberg machine which needed to turn on a light switch. Through the engineering design process, the girls went over several designs, then gathered materials, and built their machine which was successful in completing the task during the event.
This competition allowed students to push themselves beyond their everyday curriculum. Seeing these young women get excited about STEM was exhilarating. Through their example it is evident that the future of STEM in the Carbondale Area School District is bright.
