4-H National Youth Science Day
On October 10, 2012, millions of young people across the nation will become scientists for the day during the fifth annual 4-H National Youth Science Day (NYSD). NYSD is the premier national rallying event for year-round 4-H Science programming, bringing together youth, volunteers and educators from the nation’s 111 land-grant colleges and universities to simultaneously complete the National Science Experiment.
In this year's experiment, the 4-H Eco-Bot Challenge, youth will enhance their engineering skills by learning to think like a robotics engineer, assembling their own robots, also known as Eco-bots, and control surfaces in order to manage an environmental clean-up. Youth will then test the interaction between the Eco-Bot’s environmental engineering design features and various control surface configurations to determine the most effective environmental clean-up solution for a simulated toxic spill.
Part One: Build Your Bot
Youth will assemble their own Eco-Bot, then discover how the robot functions.
Part Two: The Goal is Control
Youth will design a set of control surfaces to program the Eco-Bot to perform a simulated environmental clean-up project.
Part Three: Make a Clean Sweep
Youth will measure the effectiveness of their control surfaces by recording how much of the spill is “swept up” by the Eco-Bot.
4-H youth are a living, breathing, culture-changing movement for doing the right thing, breaking through obstacles and pushing the country forward to successfully face the challenges of the future. Participation in 4-H National Youth Science Day is meant to help spark an early passion for science, engineering and math and to encourage young people to consider these paths of study and future careers.
To learn more about 4-H National Youth Science Day, how you can participate locally or to download program materials, go to www.4-H.org/NYSD
Don’t forget to find us on Facebook and Twitter to take part in the dialogue about 4-H National Youth Science Day!
Click here to view House Bill 1390 declaring October 8 as National Youth Science Day.
Visit 4-H.org for more information about 4-H National Youth Science Day.
Go to 4-H Brand Network to download a media toolkit pertaining to 4-H National Youth Science Day
To go along with this event utah4h.org is offering eight great experiments that can be done as a club or as an afterschool group. Check them out below!
