NUSTEM with IntoUniversity and Year 6 from Welbeck Academy

NUSTEM is an outreach group based at Northumbria University. We believe that STEM should be accessible to everyone, for study and for pleasure, from early years, through school, to employment, and beyond. We support children, families and teachers to feel more confident that a career in STEM is for ‘people like them’.

Today Year 6 became systems engineers. They used different people, components and actions together to solve a problem- building a marble run where the marble rolls for the longest amount of time! Visit our STEM at Home Marble Run page to use cardboard and tape to design, build, test and improve your own marble runs.

NUSTEM Pop-Up Shop May half term 2022

This week the NUSTEM Pop-Up Shop visited Outer West Library on Tuesday and the Beacon Shopping Centre on Wednesday.

Out theme this half term is pollinators. Birds, bats, butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, wasps, small mammals, and most importantly, bees are pollinators. They visit flowers to drink nectar or feed on pollen and transport pollen grains as they move from spot to spot. It is through pollination that plants are fertilised and able to produce the next generation of plants, including the fruit and crops we eat. Pollinators pollinate over 180,000 different plant species and more than 1200 crops. That means that 1 out of every three bites of food you eat is there because of pollinators.  Pollinators also support healthy ecosystems that clean the air, stabilise soils, protect from severe weather, and support other wildlife.

You can attract pollinators to your garden by planting the seeds in the packet you made at the Pop Up Shop.

The careers we have chosen that link to pollinators are:

Ecologist– scientists who study how people plants and animals interact with each other in an ecosystem. They are collaborative, organised, communicators.

Environmental Scientist– scientists interested in the world around us and how we are changing it. They are passionate, creative and committed.

Entomologist – scientists who study insects. They are  logical, hard working and tenacious.

Apiarist (bee keeper) – manage and maintain bee colonies. They are observant, self motivated and patient.

Behaviour Scientist– scientists who study the way insects behave. They are curious, collaborative and resilient.

You might want to try our related STEM at home activities:

Make a wormery using an empty pop bottle.

Grow some seeds in a plastic bag in your home.

Make floating paper flowers – the folded petals of your flowers will open up and your flower will bloom when placed in water.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday 17th February Byker Library Pop Up shop

What will you be?

We had our first pop up shop at Byker library today!  We had great fun with families participating in activities based on STEM careers.

If you’d like to find out a bit more about the different featured careers and try some activities for yourself at home, click these links:

The sound engineer (bagpipes)

The cryptographer (code breaking)

The botanist (seeds)

Do you have the skills and attributes needed to do one of these jobs when you leave school?

Tuesday 3rd December Family Structural Engineers

Inmarsat building, Wikimedia Commons

This afternoon, families joined the NUSTEM team for a drop in structural engineering activity. We challenged you to design and build the strongest bridge possible, and to test this by hanging 100g weights from the centre of the bridge to see how much weight it would hold before it collapsed.

How did you do?

For more building activities to try at home using inexpensive, household resources, click here.

What is a structural engineer?

Structural engineers are focused on all aspects concerned with buildings and built structures, such as houses, hospitals, office blocks, bridges, oil rigs, ships and aircraft. They work to understand, predict and measure aspects such as the strength, stability and how rigid buildings are. They also work to develop new designs or modify the designs of buildings or structures which are to be constructed and are responsible for choosing the appropriate materials, such as concrete, steel, timber and masonry, to meet design specification.

Attributes: observant, committed, tenacious

There are many different kinds of engineers. We have lots more career information and activities related to different types of engineers for you to try at home.  Click here to find out more about wind energy engineers, click here to learn about sound engineers, and click here to discover more about mechanical engineers.

 

 

30th October 2019 Sci Pop @ The Beacon

What will you be?

Our Sci Pop event at the Beacon centre today had families participating in activities based on STEM careers.

If you’d like to find out a bit more about the different featured careers and try some activities for yourself at home, click these links:

 

The sound engineer (loud lollies)

The cryptographer (ciphers)

The optical engineer (spinners)

The aeronautical engineer (balloon rockets)

 

 

We also had our environmental scientist showing how she measures indoor pollution. Click here to find out more about her research, and click here to take part in the dust study.

30th May 2019 Sci Pop @ The Beacon

We’ve spent today at the Beacon Shopping Centre exploring all sorts of STEM activities with families and Scouts from the 49th Newcastle Scout Group.

If you’d like to find out a bit more about the different activities and try them yourself at home, click these links:

The Botanist

The Mechanical Engineer

The Naval Architect

The Aerospace Engineer

 

 

18 April 2019 — Sci Pop @ The Beacon

We’ve spent today at the Beacon Shopping Centre exploring all sorts of STEM activities with families.

If you’d like to find out a bit more about the different activities and try them yourself at home, click these links: