Students from Aptos High School prepare to watch their trebuchet in action just seconds before it flung an apple across the fairgrounds at the Santa Cruz County STEAM Expo Saturday. (Aric Sleeper/Santa Cruz Sentinel)
WATSONVILLE — Hundreds of students, teachers, parents and curious community members came out to the Santa Cruz County Fairgrounds on Saturday for the first Santa Cruz County STEAM Expo.
The event, organized by the Santa Cruz County Office of Education, is part traditional science fair, part interactive expo with interesting hands-on activities and competitions like the apple-throwing trebuchet battle. STEAM is similar to the acronym STEM or science, technology, engineering and mathematics, but with the added element of the arts.
“With the integration of science and the arts, we wanted to bring in things that are not traditionally seen as science, like the trebuchets that are built by physics and construction tech students,” said Santa Cruz County Office of Education Science Coordinator Heather Wygant. “I wanted to pull in ag, construction, auto tech and cosmetology and still have a science and engineering fair that’s competitive.”
The event had more than 90 students from across the county participating in the traditional science fair portion of the event such as Pacific Collegiate School eighth grader Alex Profumo, who devised a plan to save humanity if and when the planet becomes uninhabitable by moving everyone to a black hole.
“I learned about how when you get into a black hole, there’s all kinds of cool things you can do,” said Profumo. “You can actually go back in time and all kinds of stuff and that’s what got me interested in black holes as a concept and gave me this idea. When the Earth becomes unlivable, you build a ship and send everyone to the closest black hole and orbit around it. Because of the conservation of angular momentum, you can get kinetic energy from the black hole so you could live there basically forever and travel cosmically.”
Outside of the Heritage Building at the fairgrounds was one of the bigger draws of the expo, the trebuchet, or catapult competition between Aptos High School students and those from Scotts Valley High School who had designed a flywheel trebuchet.
“Aptos High has so many trees around it, it’s hard to find a place to really see what this thing is capable of,” said Dusten Dennis, who teaches construction science at Aptos High. “So it’s fun to have a nice day to try it out in the field. We’ll probably launch it about 80 to 90 yards today.”
Inside the Crosetti Building, area schools and local organizations steeped in science and the arts featured interactive activities for young people such as Joby Aviation’s virtual reality test flights to Watsonville High School’s environmental science program, which had a workshop setup for kids of all ages, who were allowed to use power tools to make wooden kazoos.
“We use all recycled materials,” said volunteer Robert Guillermo. “We teach the kids about science and how to use tools. They get to make their own kazoos and take them home.”
Sophomore Adam Harrel and other students from San Lorenzo Valley High School had the arts taken care of with numerous stations and exhibits that combined the concepts of art and science.
“Here, you can color in a snake with fun colors or write about what gets you through tough times,” said Harrell. “The piece is called “You don’t have to pick your poison,” and it will be hung in the counseling office. The premise is that a lot of people think they have to pick between a bad option and a worse option, but you don’t have to.”
San Lorenzo Valley High art teacher Terry Thompson helped organize numerous activities and exhibits at the expo and found that the integration of arts and sciences engages students on a higher level.
“There are immense possibilities when you integrate curriculums,” said Thompson. “Most public school kids today feel like school is something that’s done to them and not something they’re an active participant in but when you teach whole curriculums through all modalities then the kids can find something to connect to and care a lot about. It gives them the why for school.”
One of the most popular interactive stations at the expo was one organized by the local nonprofit X Academy, which is centered around robotics and robotics competitions such as the international MATE ROV competition. Cole Williams and Bennet Menzler, both juniors at Santa Cruz High School were volunteering Saturday at the expo and helping young scientists compose submersible robots of their own that they could test in an inflatable pool on site.
“We’re helping kids get into the underwater robotics world,” said Menzler. “Working with the younger kids also helps me develop my own interpersonal skills and so do the competitions. It’s pretty awesome.”
“It’s really cool to teach someone,” added Williams. “It’s also interesting to see the designs that they come up with. They’re so different from what I made my first time.”
County Superintendent of Schools Faris Sabbah said he hopes that the well-attended event will become an annual tradition that continues to expand into the future.
“It’s been amazing,” said Sabbah. “Having the concept of a STEAM Expo is just beautiful. We have students doing poetry and ceramics — just layers and layers of creativity and I am just really excited about what students have been able to demonstrate in terms of skills and talents. Moving forward, we’d like to get all of our schools across the county involved and more people from the community to come in and see what our young people are able to do, and I think this will just continue to grow.”
