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Museums are usually quiet places, but Isaac Dabkowski and Rebecca Hollister want to give children a chance to scream at the top of their lungs at Union Station’s Science City.
The Patton Junior High School seventh-graders are working on a project, “Battle of the Brains,” to compete for their exhibit to go on display at the Kansas City, Mo., museum. The winners will also receive up to a $50,000 grant to support science, technology, engineering and math, known as STEM, education in their schools.
The Burns & McDonnell Foundation sponsors the competition. Burns & McDonnell is an engineering and construction company in Kansas City. Students in school districts throughout the Kansas City area are competing. Judges will choose the top 10 projects, then the public will vote on the winners Nov. 11-18 online at www.battleofthebrainskc.com.
Dabkowski and Hollister chose to focus their project on sound. Their ideas include a “scream-off” booth that measures decibels, where families can compete to find out who has the loudest scream. There’s also a decibel dial station to turn up sound waves, a bead game that shows sound waves and a sound babble that plays back sound to interfere with speech.
“It plays back one-fifth of a second later, so their brain to ear coordination does not work and they cannot speak intelligently,” Hollister said.
Dabkowski said he got the idea of a scream-off booth because he’s in a large family with a lot of noise and thought it would be fun. The booth would be soundproofed so that it doesn’t disturb other events at Union Station, he said.
Several other groups on post are working on similar projects at Bradley, Eisenhower and MacArthur elementary schools. With help from their Burns & McDonnell mentor, their gifted teachers Karen Gladhart and Pam Jordan, and Snibbe, a museum exhibition company, students have a $200,000 budget to plan their exhibits. They won’t actually build the exhibit — that will be done by Burns & McDonnell — but the students have to come up with a viable plan to build as part of their exhibition entry.
Seventh-graders Haley Patterson and Emma Cleland-Leighton are focusing their project on ways to stay eco-friendly. One of their ideas is to use interactive touch-screen technology so flowers pop up and a game to show how to properly recycle. They’re also working on an interactive tool that will help children learn how to sort items for recycling and a house that shows eco-friendly items compared to a house that does not.
“We’ve just really thought a lot about how we impact the environment, so I think this is a good experience,” Cleland-Leighton said.
Many students are also working on educational displays about natural disasters, especially tornadoes. Gladhart said students at Eisenhower Elementary School are focusing their project on how buildings survive severe weather.
“I think having to plan a real exhibit area that is engaging for them, and younger ages, is a challenge but one they are aware of,” Gladhart said. “Turning research and knowledge into an engaging platform for a science center is challenging.”
Jordan said the project has encouraged STEM education in her students.
“It’s a wonderful way for them to use higher-level thinking skills and collaborating and incorporating them with all the STEM areas,” she said.
Another group of Patton students is working on a tornado display, with a giant model of a tornado in the center of their exhibit.
“The challenge is making it so interesting that kids will want to stay there more than a minute or two,” seventh-grader Victoria Knowlton said.
Museums are usually quiet places, but Isaac Dabkowski and Rebecca Hollister want to give children a chance to scream at the top of their lungs at Union Station’s Science City.
The Patton Junior High School seventh-graders are working on a project, “Battle of the Brains,” to compete for their exhibit to go on display at the Kansas City, Mo., museum. The winners will also receive up to a $50,000 grant to support science, technology, engineering and math, known as STEM, education in their schools.
The Burns & McDonnell Foundation sponsors the competition. Burns & McDonnell is an engineering and construction company in Kansas City. Students in school districts throughout the Kansas City area are competing. Judges will choose the top 10 projects, then the public will vote on the winners Nov. 11-18 online at www.battleofthebrainskc.com.
Dabkowski and Hollister chose to focus their project on sound. Their ideas include a “scream-off” booth that measures decibels, where families can compete to find out who has the loudest scream. There’s also a decibel dial station to turn up sound waves, a bead game that shows sound waves and a sound babble that plays back sound to interfere with speech.
“It plays back one-fifth of a second later, so their brain to ear coordination does not work and they cannot speak intelligently,” Hollister said.
Dabkowski said he got the idea of a scream-off booth because he’s in a large family with a lot of noise and thought it would be fun. The booth would be soundproofed so that it doesn’t disturb other events at Union Station, he said.
Several other groups on post are working on similar projects at Bradley, Eisenhower and MacArthur elementary schools. With help from their Burns & McDonnell mentor, their gifted teachers Karen Gladhart and Pam Jordan, and Snibbe, a museum exhibition company, students have a $200,000 budget to plan their exhibits. They won’t actually build the exhibit — that will be done by Burns & McDonnell — but the students have to come up with a viable plan to build as part of their exhibition entry.
Seventh-graders Haley Patterson and Emma Cleland-Leighton are focusing their project on ways to stay eco-friendly. One of their ideas is to use interactive touch-screen technology so flowers pop up and a game to show how to properly recycle. They’re also working on an interactive tool that will help children learn how to sort items for recycling and a house that shows eco-friendly items compared to a house that does not.
“We’ve just really thought a lot about how we impact the environment, so I think this is a good experience,” Cleland-Leighton said.
Many students are also working on educational displays about natural disasters, especially tornadoes. Gladhart said students at Eisenhower Elementary School are focusing their project on how buildings survive severe weather.
“I think having to plan a real exhibit area that is engaging for them, and younger ages, is a challenge but one they are aware of,” Gladhart said. “Turning research and knowledge into an engaging platform for a science center is challenging.”
Jordan said the project has encouraged STEM education in her students.
“It’s a wonderful way for them to use higher-level thinking skills and collaborating and incorporating them with all the STEM areas,” she said.
Another group of Patton students is working on a tornado display, with a giant model of a tornado in the center of their exhibit.
“The challenge is making it so interesting that kids will want to stay there more than a minute or two,” seventh-grader Victoria Knowlton said.
