Category Archives: STEM

Hamlin Student: Finalist for EngineerGirl Essay Contest

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Emily M. (Grade 7) is a finalist for the EngineerGirl essay contest.

Her essay addressed the following prompt:

Tell a story about a person learning to live on a new world while traveling through space.

Learning…A lifelong journey. These are stories from the spaceship Vestigo. Its 20-year journey will take a large group of people from Earth to a new home outside our solar system…

The passengers are from 2- to 50-years-old and will have little contact with Earth. They will have access to books and other resources onboard the ship. Many are experts in different fields.

Vestigo is equipped with artificial gravity and large areas for growing food. Living quarters are like compact apartments.

Everyone onboard will need education and training. They will need to maintain the ship and to prepare for life on a new planet. Most people will need to be skilled in more than one area.

Emily’s essay, “Tides of Learning,” was selected from hundreds of essays that were submitted.

One judge said the following about her essay:

The story is very well-written and creative. I like the author’s idea of duplicating water molecules by combining a droplet with nutrient solution and oxygen. In fact, this could be a realistic technique in the future. In order to make water molecules (H2O), you need oxygen atoms (maybe from oxygen gas) and hydrogen atoms (maybe from a protein isolate like the author proposed) and also an efficient catalyst under proper conditions (like heat) to make them react. The essay shows deep understanding of engineering design ideas.

Contest winners will be notified in May.

For more information about the EngineerGirl Essay Contest, please visit: https://www.engineergirl.org/

Hamlin Achieves High Mark At San Francisco Science Fair

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Katie F. recently won 3rd place at the San Francisco Science Fair. Her work was selected from nearly 3,000 projects completed at schools across the city. Below is an overview of her project in her own words (lightly edited):

My goal is to find an affordable, simple, unlimited resource that can be used to filter contaminated water and give people all over the world access to clean water. After volunteering at Matter of Trust, a non-profit based in San Francisco that tackles the detrimental crisis of oil spills in our oceans using hair mats, I wondered if hair might be able to filter contaminants within dirty drinking water.

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5th Annual STEMming the Gender Gap Day

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For the 5th year running, The Hamlin School celebrated STEMming the Gender Gap Day on Friday, December 6. The day was an opportunity to promote science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education/careers for our students, while connecting with female tech leaders in the Bay Area. Hamlin girls were able to observe, interact, and learn, as they prepare to be tomorrow’s tech innovators and help #StemGenderGap!

This year Hamlin visited a variety of fantastic Bay Area organizations; we are incredibly thankful for these partnerships.

Students in grades K-7 had wonderful learning experiences at:

The Hiller Aviation Museum, The Bay Area Discovery Museum, Mission Science, The Apple Store, Butterfly Joint, Salesforce, UCSF, USS Hornet, Tesla, Sentry, and JU.ST

Students in Grade 8 had the opportunity to learn from the following speakers on campus:

Hour of Code Week @Hamlin

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The beginning of December brings a weeklong celebration of coding and STEM. Students in all grades Kindergarten through Grade 8 are participating in various activities centered on a dynamic exploration of technology and related fields. Our students join kids from around the globe in this engaging endeavor.

Throughout the week students are practicing their coding skills using the following:

Lightbot, Cargo-bot, Playgrounds, Code.org, Human Resource Machine, Kodable, App Lab, Dance Party, Blockly, Classic Maze, Compute it, and Conditionals with Cards.

On Wednesday morning we will welcome guest speaker, Jenny Wang. Ms. Wang is a computer science student at Harvard University, intern at POPSUGAR, director of Startup Girl, and board member for Shiffon Co. Jewelry.

For the 4th year running, The Hamlin School will celebrate STEMming the Gender Gap Day on Friday, December 7. The day is an opportunity to promote science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education/careers for our students, while connecting with female tech leaders in the Bay Area. Hamlin girls will be able to observe, interact, and learn, as they prepare to be tomorrow’s tech innovators and help #StemGenderGap!

This year Hamlin is visiting a variety of fantastic Bay Area organizations; we are incredibly thankful for these partnerships.

Students in grades K-7 will have experiences at:

The Lawrence Hall of Science, The Bay Area Discovery Museum, The Exploratorium, Salesforce, POPSUGAR, Eventbrite, HoneyBook, UCSF, USS Hornet, Tesla, Apple, Brightwheel, California Academy of Sciences and Sentry

Students in Grade 8 will have the opportunity to learn from the following speakers on campus:

Sali Christenson, Founder of Argent
Patricia Santos, CEO and Co-Founder of Volition Beauty
Heidi Zak, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Thirdlove
Eurie Kim, Investor at Forerunner Ventures
Kathryn Duryea, Founder and CEO of Year & Day
Steph Palmeri, Partner at Uncork Capital
Lauren Loktev, Partner at Collaborative Fund
Sara Adler, Partner at Wave Capital

 

Claire Garlington brings STEM Portraits to Hamlin

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Last week Claire Garlington, (a senior at the Bay School, attending UCSD next year for chemical engineering) spoke with our students at middle school assembly. Ms. Garlington recently painted four influential women from various STEM fields. Ms. Garlington is passionate about creating greater awareness about women in STEM; past, present, and future.

The portraits of Lise Meitner (Physics), Mae Jemison (NASA), Maryam Mirzakhani (Math), Cher Wang (Technology) will be on display in Stanwood Hall until June 1st.