Why this activity

I organize STEM-themed family nights in our school once a month. As a Scientix Ambassador, these meetings become an excellent way to spread STEM education model to a wider community. Since the STEM Discovery Week takes place in April, I see this as a great opportunity to combine our Family STEM Night activity for April with STEM Discovery Week 2019. In our Family STEM Nights students, teachers and parents meet and they all work together to accomplish the challenges specifically designed for that night. For the STEM Discovery Week 2019, our main scope is to learn about the physics, math, engineering, architecture, design and technology behind geodesic domes and create one as a team..

Introduction

Our activity began with a short video to attract the participants’ attention. Then we discussed about different roof and ceiling structures through the history such as ancient Greek temples (Parthenon), Egyptian and Mayan pyramids. With this approach we learned more about why the domes are more practical, beneficial, convenient and functional. Many architects and engineers throughout the history like Da Vinci, Mimar Sinan and Buckminster Fuller tried to build large domes to demonstrate their immortal masterpieces. We also examined world-wide famous domes from history to our days like Hagia Sophia, Astrodome, Climatron. (here is the link for the slides)