Summer science

CEDAR RAPIDS - School's been out for a week, but there was still learning going on at McKinley Middle School on Thursday.

About a dozen future seventh- and eighth-grade students gathered around a table in a second-floor classroom to show off pinwheels they had designed and built to lift a small cup filled with pennies.

Andrew Spearman, 12, built his pinwheel out of a metal pie tin with Popsicle sticks on the end. Some of his previous attempts, which had used construction paper, lay on the classroom floor.

He handed the pinwheel to AmeriCorps volunteer Chris Edwards, who secured it to a table in front of a large fan.

“That's a good material because it's light and sturdy,” Edwards said as the blades slowly turned and hoisted the cargo below.

Andrew and his classmates are participating in the McKinley STEM Academy, an eight-day summer day camp for students with an interest in science, technology, engineering and math.

The academy is part of a partnership between the school, Iowa State University Extension and Outreach and the United Way of East Central Iowa, which provided the AmeriCorps volunteers staffing the event. It's one of several community efforts to extend student learning beyond the school year into the summer, volunteer Amy Akenbrandt said.

“We want the kids to get excited and feel empowered and know there are opportunities for them in science careers,” she said.

In addition to general scientific interest, the academy has a theme of exploring wind power and green energy - the pinwheels were among the wind-themed activities. Students also took trips to Clipper Windpower and the Kirkwood Community College wind turbine, and they will visit Green Iowa and Cedar Rapids Electrical next week.

Some students, such as Andrew, sought out the academy because they're already excited about science.

“It just looked like lots of fun and I wanted to learn more about windmills,” he said.

Others, such as Tya Johnson and Gage Dye, both 13, were invited to attend after receiving high scores on the science portion of the Iowa Assessments state standardized tests.

A teacher “said I did really well and said he thought I should come,” Johnson said.

The trip to the Kirkwood wind turbine was one of the most impressive moments of the academy so far, Dye said.

“It doesn't really look that big, and then all of a sudden you're right there, and it's so huge,” he said.

The turbine was Andrew's top highlight as well, but Johnson's favorite part was when she and her teammates won the “marshmallow challenge,” a building exercise where students have to build a tower in 18 minutes using dry spaghetti, masking tape and string.

“We had the tallest one both times,” she said.

This session of the academy continues through Thursday, and a second starts July 9.