Clairbourn Invents!

The inventor spirit was out in full-force on Clairbourn’s campus during the school’s annual Project: S.T.A.R. event which celebrates the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects. This year, students from fourth through fifth grades studied famous inventors or developed their own unique inventions and then displayed their work during the Project: S.T.A.R. science fair. Project: S.T.A.R. stands for science, technology, and research and was developed to encourage all students to discover the scientist, inventor, researcher, and mathematician within. Students learn that these subjects don’t have to be intimidating. At their core, these subjects are really about problem solving—something all of us are involved in every day.

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To further their interest in inventions and science, students also attended a special talk by Allison Sengstacken of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. She explained that JPL is NASA’s main facility for inventing and building robots for space exploration. JPL’s latest robot is the Curiosity rover that landed on Mars in August of 2012. She explained to students the inventive process JPL scientists and engineers went through to build a machine that could handle the complexities of the mission and achieve the desired scientific objectives. Afterwards she took questions from the intensely engaged audience and encouraged students to become the next generation of inventors and scientists for the space program.

Clairbourn School, 8400 Huntington Drive, San Gabriel, (626)286-3108 or visit  www.clairbourn.org.