By: Paul Morrone
In a world dominated by screens, social media and instant gratification, it is a breath of fresh air to watch the kids play with toys. The latest trend in our house has been in the form of a subscription box from CrunchLabs – a media company founded by former NASA JPL engineer Mark Rober who has a standout series on YouTube and Netflix. What’s unique about his show is that he’ll take on engineering projects that engage children (things like creating pool full of Jello – which is WAY more complicated that you would think), while also explaining the science and math behind it. Kyle, at 7 years old, is hooked. So much so that we get monthly deliveries from CrunchLabs where they get to put their STEM skills to use by creating catapults, disc launchers and various simple machines that they can then play with once built.
We get the boxes delivered by mail around the 20th of the month, but, without fail, Kyle will start asking around the first of the month when his next box is coming in. It’s something he looks forward to, and I do, too. What started as a dad and Kyle project the first round, has become mostly a Kyle project. Aside from brief moments that require an extra set of hands, he largely builds everything himself. And when he’s done, he’s so proud to show it off.
We recently spent some time working through the latest box which required us to build three catapults that, when set up properly, will launch foam balls at one another to create a chain reaction. The first ball fires and hits the trigger to the second one, and so on. You could almost see the gears turning in Kyle’s head as he adjusted the sensitivity of the trigger, watched the arc of the balls and modified the strength of the launching mechanism to make it all work together.
After a handful of failed attempts getting all three launchers to coordinate, we finally nailed the timing, distances and angles to get all three to fire off in succession. We even got the last ball to shoot into a bowl on our last try. Score! We celebrated like he just hit a walk-off home run in the world series.
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