STEM and Makers

A little History

Our nation’s continued economic prosperity is closely linked with student success in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Use these resources to explore the critical role STEM education plays in driving innovation, and how schools and districts can expand the capacity and diversity of tomorrow’s STEM workforce. Maker & STEM

Talks

General Topics

When you are on vacation it is common to take pictures. When you get home, what do you do with the pictures?
We are going to learn how to create web photo albums with JAlbum to document your trips. This will help you remember where you were as well as share some pictures with friends.

Tesla and the Electric Car

The electric car adaption has been greatly accelerated by a startup company named Tesla. This upstart car company, as of July 1, 2020, is the most valuable car company in the world, and has redefined electric cars.

But why is Tesla so popular? How is Tesla’s approach different than Ford? Isn’t an electric car just a different motor in a normal car? How does driving an electric car differ from driving an ICE (internal combustion engine) car? How is an electric car different or the same an ICE car?

Geothermal Heat for you home

How do I get Mother Earth to help me heat my Home? To find the answer pay attention to what I am about to tell you.

Computing Topics

What is IOT

IOT (Internet of Everything) and embedded system are taking over. How to understand, How to adapt, and are we ready.

What’s Inside the Computer

We use computers to play games, write letters, watch movies, and many other tasks, but do we know what is inside the computer? Lets explore what is inside the compter and how it works.

Writing an Editor

What to understand how to create an editor? Here are some tutorials to help you learn about creating some in C.

Home Wiki

Personal web servers are a great way to save manuals, interesting links, trip memories, and many other bits and pieces of information.

We are going to create a home Wiki using a Raspberry Pi and a USB hard disk. This will be a headless server, meaning that it can live anywhere it can connect to your network.

Editing Words, Formatted and Tagged

Text documents, Word documents, PDF files, Markup documents, Markdown documents, Web pages, *.docx, *.html, *.odt, *.tex confused yet? On a computer we have multiple types of documents to express thoughts, ideas, or just letters. Lets look at some methods of marking documents.

Now that we know what types of documents we are creating, how can we use them in a wiki or a web browser.

Audio

Intro to Sound

How is sound created?
How does sound travel?
How do we hear sound?
What is:
- Frequency and Wavelength
- Amplitude and Volume
Music vs Noise

Recorded Sound

How do we record sound? How do we measure sound? How do we modify sound? How do we recreate sound?
Why does the same song sound different at home, or in the car, or over ear buds from my phone?
Come along as we look at how sound is converted into electrons, recorded onto media, manipulated, and finally spit out to our ears. What we take for granted when listening to music, is really a wonder of complexity, but moves our ears to joy.

Recorded Sound Continued

This is a continuation of the Recorded Sound Talk

Home Tools and Wood Working

Tools for your home

Living in a home or an apartment you need to fix things from time to time. But whether you are an old pro, or a newbie you need to know what tools you need for what type of work.
Tonight we are going to start a discussion of what tools are best for what situation. There are some basic tools and some nice to have tools, depending on what you need to do. I will include fasteners and common parts as they seem appropriate.

Tools for your home (Continued) plus Wood working tools

Last talk the list of tools got too long, so I broke this up into a second talk.
In addition to hand tools I am going to discuss some workworking tools.

Wood Working for Beginners

We have looked at the tools you would use to do wood working, now it is time to use the tools.
We will make a couple of simple tools and look at an idea for a book case, from a single sheet of plywood.

Wood Shaping

We began by learning about woodworking tools, then we discussed how to build things with wood. Now we are going to explore wood shaping.
We will start by exploring the original wood shaping methods like chisels and knives, and finish with the computer controlled cutting.

Linux with DIY CNC Router

So you decided to build you very own CNC (Computer Numeric Control)router. Now you need software to control the CNC. You need a design program to create your master pieces. You need to convert your master piece for the CNC control software. Linux comes to the rescue. Come along for an interesting walk through wood working Linux style.

Electricity

Electricity and Magnets

Where does electricity come from? How do we create it? What is the relationship between magnets and moving electricity? We will try to explain this phenomenon.

Power from the Sun

Our planet is livable because our sun provides energy in the form of light and heat. The plants use photosynthesis to grow. The sun warms the ground, which warms the air, which in tern warms us.
What if we could use the sun’s energy to produce electricity to power our machines? Well, we can, using photovoltaic panels.

Power from the Wind

Wind energy has powered civilization for millennia with wind mills, and wind sails. But today with the demand for renewable energy there is a great demand for wind turbins to create electricity.
Lets look at the uses of wind energy, the wind patterns around the world, and what potential the wind has today to help with our energy needs.

Power from the Water

The ocean covers 70% of the surface of the earth and holds 96% of all water. The evaporation provides water for the rain. The currents move the warm water from the tropics to Europe. The wind moves sailing ships, and drives wind turbines.
How can we capture this energy to create electricity to power our modern civilization? Let’s explore what is being done today and in the future to capture this energy.

Storing Electricity

One major problem with solar panels, wind turbines, and water wave power generation is that they do not work 24/7. So if we want to get away from burning fossil fuels to create electricity, we need some way to store electricity.

Computers changed the World

Intro to How Technology Works

Today we take for granted all the automation around us, But in about the last 50 years we have gone from room size computers to cell phones, computers that fit in our pockets. Sound was analog, pictures and movies were on photographic film, TV was seen on a glass tube, phones were analog, and most writing was on paper.
What components, methods, and technologies are responsible for these changes? Come with me as we learn how electronics have revolutionized our world. What is under the covers in both hardware and software that makes our modern life possible.
This will be a wide ranging discussion of not only what changed, but why and how it has impacted our lives.

Written by John F. Moore

Last Revised: Sun Feb 2 03:08:41 PM EST 2025