More than 120 members of the Southern Nevada community joined the NNSS for the highly anticipated return of STEM Saturdays on September 7 at the Atomic Museum, marking the first session of the series for 2024-2025 academic year.
Now in its third year, the STEM Saturdays program, organized by NNSS Outreach & Engagement and presented with Clark County School District Career and Technical Education and the Atomic Museum, aligns the Las Vegas community with NNSS subject leaders to spotlight STEM education topics, provide hands-on activities and inspire connections between STEM and a multitude of career paths.
The event, offered at no cost to students and families, gave students a front-row seat to the power of light and temperature through thermal imaging, laser interferometry and fiber optics demonstrations, presented by NNSS Senior Scientist Andrei Kamalov.
“There are a lot of fascinating ways to utilize light for imaging and measurement applications that make use of the wave nature of light,” said Kamalov. “I think that knowing about some of those techniques and the incredible images that they can produce has always been stimulating for me. I was fortunate to see similar demos in my childhood, and there were always some demos that stood out to me. It was a lot of fun sharing those similar demos with the next generation of scientists and engineers!”
Thousands of community members have attended STEM Saturdays, invigorating students in geologic modeling, Fire & Rescue response, moon mission planning, groundwater interactions among many other topics. NNSS subject matter experts craft each session to engage students in STEM exploration, critical thinking and interactive experiences.
“Grade school students, especially the younger ones, are at a stage in their development where they are the most receptive to learning new concepts and learning about the world they live in,” added Kamalov. “Doing demonstrations for them is an opportunity to teach them things that I think are really cool and exciting and that they likely haven’t been exposed to yet. It is also an opportunity to stimulate the students to think more deeply about the underlying workings of their environments and the technologies that they interact with. Future generations will always deal with more advanced technologies, and I think the STEM Outreach team does a great job of priming the students to be better equipped to understand and thrive in the environments that they will grow into.”
STEM Saturdays is back October 5 with a special presentation featuring robotics and drones. Registration will open approximately one week prior to the event. Follow the NNSS Outreach page and social media to stay connected with our community engagement.