Reveling in STEM Heaven Right around the Corner

by Tracy Chow, Lower School Technology Integrator

January is always an exciting time in fourth technology class. This year, we began our winter semester with field trips to the NYU Makerspace at 6 MetroTech. Our hosts, Victoria Bill, Sean Kennon, and Jess Hochrun, gave us tours of their impressive facilities and a glimpse of the projects being worked on by NYU engineering students.

Some of the tools we saw included 3D printers, soldering stations, circuit board plotters, laser and vinyl cutters, a drone cage, CNCs, and a water jet cutter with a flow rate of 60,000 psi! For comparison, a regular garden hose has a flow rate of only 40 psi. We learned about the different challenges that teams of engineering students tackle over the course of their education at NYU, such as designing, prototyping, and testing a dune buggy that could traverse Mars or creating games using virtual reality,

Did you know that engineers from various disciplines often work together on a single project? And that engineers may have to go through many iterations of a prototype before it’s ready for production? It really does take a village to make an invention possible!

We were truly inspired by the wonderful work happening at NYU and can’t wait to apply what we’ve learned to our upcoming robotics and STEAM projects. In fact, several fourth graders were so impressed by what they saw on the field trip, they informed us that they plan on submitting their applications to the NYU school of engineering soon!

Here are some photos from the trips!