Dates: from 26/04/2021 (online)
Author: Bilyana Yordanova
For the third year, High School of Math and Science Kyustendil joins the STEM Discovery Campaign initiative. This year the focus is on student projects, which are an example of real application of what has been learnt in the field of mathematics, technology, science and engineering. We present in the form of a virtual demonstration/online lecture the best projects of students from our school. We used Google Site and thematically arranged projects, related to the tagline for this year’s campaign – Sustainability and Citizenship.
Link to our site: https://sites.google.com/pmgkn.com/sdc21/
About our projects
All projects are winners in different categories in the national competition “Looking for super STEM Bulgaria”, as well as other national competitions.
The resources from the Scientix Repository of resources helped us to implement the activity (online and in-class). We used the CODING IN STEM EDUCATION brochure, which can be found here: http://www.scientix.eu/resources/details?resourceId=23114. “What does a robot have to do with environmental protection?” “How do you remote control a model ship using a smartphone?” “How can you program a ‘pet’?” “IT is everywhere and coding offers many possibilities for exciting and relevant lessons” – just to name a few topics investigated in the brochure.
Through the virtual demonstration/online lecture, we will reach a wide audience – our students, teachers, prospective students and people with an interest in the field of STEM. We shared an article about it on our site, on the school’s website. It can be accessed here.
By integrating STEM activities in the learning areas, students are given the opportunity to develop the skills needed to adapt to a dynamically evolving pragmatic and technological environment. The skills developed through STEM provide them with a solid foundation for success, both in school and in real life. Students develop key skills such as creative thinking; critical analysis; teamwork; initiative; communication; mathematical literacy.
Each visitor can look at the projects described in detail at a convenient time and learn about the idea and its implementation. Below is a brief summary of each of them.
Project „Limited query black-box adversarial attacks in the real world“ (STEM)
Author: Hristo Todorov, a student in the 11th grade
The project explores an extremely important topic – enemy attacks, which are the intersection of cybersecurity and artificial intelligence. It was launched during this year’s Summer Research School, which took place in July and August, receiving attention from students from all over the country with interests in computer science and mathematics to create scientific developments. It was developed under the direction of Christian Georgiev, who is a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA.
This is an area that has yet to be developed, and we are demonstrating some of the first successful attempts there. Creating efficient tasks is extremely important because it has been demonstrated that only with their help can stable defences be built, by training models not to be deceived by them.
Hristo Todorov: “The project unites the fields of mathematics and informatics, which are part of the so-called STEM sciences. For me, they are important because they are the engine of modern progress, and they allow us to look at the world from a different angle and find things that we did not even suspect existed.“
Hristo has been selected to participate in Regeneron ISEF – there he will present his project. He is one of the finalists who will take part in the prestigious six-week summer school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology – Science Institute (RSI).
Project “The past future bike” & “Star Seeker”.
The winner of the special award SUPER STEM EUROPE SCIENCE is Alexandra Umlenska from 10th grade, for her project “The past future bike”.
The “Past Future Bike” is an air-forced bike with different additions. The purpose of the project is to demonstrate the usage of the air as an alternative fully ecological fuel in modern urban conditions.
Alexandra Umlenska‘s second project is “Star Seeker”. The star map includes the Latin names of the constellations and their most important stars. The project uses the latest technology for conducting light – optical fibres, a large LED, which represents the North Star and other LEDs for complete lighting. The number of stars is over 300.
Project “Clean Air”
The project of Yanislav Botsev, who is only 7th grade, is called “Clean Air”
He developed a device that measures air dust. The project consists of an SDS011 sensor for measuring fine dust particles. The serial interface of the sensor is connected via an adapter to the USB interface of a microcomputer Raspberry Pi. A fan sucks in air and passes it through the sensor and the electronics generate two numbers corresponding to the amounts of dust particles up to PM 2.5 and PM10. The developed software communicates with the sensor, reads the dust data and, depending on the values, activates three LEDs – green, yellow and red, which display the measured value of dust in the room.
We hope to have inspired you for new research, experiments and developments in the STEM field.