Tinkering Labs

Looking forward to seeing what the kids invent at the Redwood City Public Library!

Drop in at the Downtown Makerspace for Summer STEAM at the Library Mondays 3:30-5:30 for hands on STEAM activities. Each week explore a different area of STEAM. For grades 3-8.

This week: tinkering! Use Tinkering Labs Electric Motor Catalyst to build a drawing robot, a creature with spinning arms, a robot that moves without wheels or anything you can envision. When you finish, take everything apart and leave it for the next inventor.

Need more info? Tinker around with this link:
https://www.redwoodcity.org/Home/Components/Calendar/Event/77313/2638?backlist=%2fdepartments%2flibrary%2fevents

June 17 - Microscopy
June 24 - Tinkering
July 8 - Chemistry
July 15 - Earth Science
July 22 - Organic Gardening
July 29 - Entomology

Goggles on your gears? That’s a unique idea!

Isn’t a device with three wheels cool? Sometimes front-wheel drive is the way to go!

Having fun with our Tinkering Kit can produce a lot of different results! This device can draw with four markers at once! How many markers can you add to your invention?

Our Tinkerer from History this week is Creola Katherine Johnson! Johnson used her extraordinary mathematical abilities to plan several NASA 🚀 , including the first trip to the moon 🌕! Because she worked in an era before 🖥 , she had to make all these complex calculations by ✍️ . Can you believe that all the calculations she made are done by computers today? She demonstrated adaptability, a key tinkering trait, as she worked to do something humanity had never done before – land a man on the moon.

Fun Fact: Johnson worked with Mary Jackson and Dorothy Vaughn, who were also black female NASA engineers. Their story is chronicled in “Hidden Figures”, which was also made into a 🎥 🍿 !

Our Tinkerer from History this week is Rosalind Franklin! Although her work in X-ray diffraction was fundamental in establishing the “double-helix” structure of DNA, she wasn’t recognized for it until decades later. Could you believe that before Franklin, biologists and chemists could only guess what DNA looked like?

Franklin’s imaging also helped build our understanding of what viruses looked like. Like all great Tinkerers, she combined curiosity and determination with creativity and resourcefulness. She figured out how to use new scientific techniques to reveal one of the greatest mysteries of nature. Her discoveries were used by other scientists in work that led to two Nobel Prizes, one in Medicine and one in Chemistry. Even during World War II, Franklin continued her research and even bravely volunteered as an Air Raid Warden to make sure everyone was safe.

Fun Fact: Franklin loved backpacking 🎒🥾, and even hiked the French Alps🏔! Have you ever seen anything on an X-ray? Let us know in the comments, and keep an eye 👀out for our next Tinkerer!

Our Tinkerer From History this week is Alan Turing! Gay, British mathematician Alan Turing is perhaps most famous for cracking German codes during World War Two. Figuring out how to build a device which could decipher the German Enigma machines (the device Germans used to create secret messages) took incredible resilience, which is one of the qualities that makes a great Tinkerer. He worked hard to create a device to solve codes everyone thought were indecipherable and saved up to 14 million lives during the war!

Despite his contributions, Turing was later arrested for his sexuality and prevented from working with codes. However, he helped establish the field of theoretical computer science. Just using his imagination, he created the “Turing Machine” which is the grandfather of every computer, smart phone, and game console we use today! Because of his amazing contributions for science and humanity, Turing has been voted by the BBC as the “Greatest Person in the 20th Century”.

Fun Fact: Benedict Cumberbatch, who played Dr. Strange, also played Turing in the movie “The Imitation Game”! Have you ever cracked a secret code? Let us know in the comments, and keep an eye 👀 out for our next Tinkerer!

The Electric Motors Catalyst is now available on Uncrate, and for the rest of the day they have an awesome 20% off deal. Check it out at https://uncrate.com/tinkering-labs-electric-motors-toy-kit/