NEWS: PHA Robotics Team Wins Competition!

PHA Students Are
Zero Robotics Champions!

In January, PHA's Robotics team, along with two other student teams from Romania and New Jersey, won first place in the MIT Zero Robotics virtual competition!

The skilled and hardworking students battled and advanced through three rounds of competition, coding programs that control actual robotic satellites on the International Space Station.

Learn More about robotics competitions:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_competition

Celebrating Black History Month

  Meet These African Americans in Science

The photos, names, and occupations of these people in the sciences are only part of their stories.

Just for fun, use the links below or do your own research to find out:

Who is still in school at MIT in Cambridge but already working on a project for NASA?  
Who was portrayed in the movie Hidden Figures?  
Who works for the National Zoo in Washington, D.C.?
Who is a retired Air Force colonel?  
Which of these people plays heavy metal guitar?
Who attended Howard University at age 16?
Who became interested in science when she and her brother walked through the woods catching insects and animals?  
Who developed robots that study the impact of global warming in Antarctica?  
Who said as a child, "If I had a screwdriver and a pair of pliers, anything that could be opened was in danger" and later invented microphone technology?

Learn more:
Cagle: https://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/cagle.html 
Daily: https://www.cise.ufl.edu/people/faculty/daily
Day: http://www.thehistorymakers.com/biography/agnes-day
Drew: https://profiles.nlm.nih.gov/ps/retrieve/Narrative/BG/p-nid/336
Francisco: http://chem.unl.edu/joseph-s-francisco
Frederick: https://www.howard.edu/secretary/trustees/bios/frederick.htm
Green:http://www.tuskegee.edu/academics/colleges/ceps/ceps_special_programs/phd_program_in_materials_science_engineering/facultystaff/dr_hadiyah-nicole_green2.aspx

Guinn: https://www.gineersnow.com/engineering/aeronautical/22-year-old-student-already-engineer-nasa
Hammonds: http://histsci.fas.harvard.edu/people/evelynn-hammonds
Howard: http://howard.ece.gatech.edu/
Jackson, M.: https://www.nasa.gov/content/mary-jackson-biography
Jackson, S.: http://www.nytimes.com/ref/college/faculty/coll_pres_jacksonbio.html
Johnson: https://www.nasa.gov/content/katherine-johnson-biography/ 
Just: http://www.blackpast.org/aah/just-ernest-everett-1883-1941
Mickens: http://www.seas.harvard.edu/directory/mickens
Neal: https://www.lsa.umich.edu/physics/directory/faculty/ci.nealhomer_ci.detail
Stevens: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2005-12-21/features/0512210202_1_new-panda-giant-panda-program-smithsonian-national-zoological-park
Vaughan: https://www.nasa.gov/content/dorothy-vaughan-biography
Washington: https://staff.ucar.edu/users/wmw
West: http://engineering.jhu.edu/ece/faculty/west-james-e/

(sources and photo credits: Johns Hopkins University, NASA, Harvard University, NYT, Tuskegee University, MIT, UCAR, WGBH, University of Florida, NIH, Howard University, The History Makers, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Smithsonian Museum, blackpast.org, University of Michigan, Wikipedia)

Another Planet Like Earth?

Credit: ESO./L. Calçada/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org)

Scientists have confirmed that there is a rocky planet, called Proxima B, with some earthlike qualities that is orbiting a star 4.2 light years away from us.

Learn more at:

https://www.eso.org/public/usa/news/eso1629/

http://www.space.com/34334-proxima-centauri-habitable-second-earth-interstellar-alien-life.html

http://scitechdaily.com/astronomers-reveal-that-proxima-centauri-might-be-more-sunlike-than-previously-thought/

Visit the planet as an artist imagines it at

https://www.eso.org/public/usa/videos/eso1629d/

The World's Smallest Machines

Image from the Nobel Prize web site, http://kva.se

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2016 was awarded to scientists Jean-Pierre Sauvage, Sir J. Fraser Stoddart and Bernard L. Feringa who have figured out a way to make molecules into tiny machines like an elevator or a motor smaller than the eye can see.

One day, a tiny machine could be used inside your body to fight disease.

Learn more:

https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2016/popular-chemistryprize2016.pdf

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/science/nobel-prize-chemistry.html?_r=0

https://www.wired.com/2016/10/nanoscale-machines-snag-nobel-prize-chemistry/

Concrete That Bends?

Engineers have developed a new bendable concrete containing thin threads of plastic or glue-like substances that make it stronger and more flexible.

Learn more at:

http://ceramics.org/ceramic-tech-today/breaking-the-mold-bendable-concrete-defies-conventional-standards-of-durability-and-strength

http://phys.org/news/2016-08-bendable-concrete-stronger-durable.html

https://bridgecontest.org/resources/download/ -- a fun program to learn about material strength

Physicist Invents New Technology to Treat Cancer

Dr. Hadiyah-Nicole Green is the first scientist to develop a method to insert nanoparticles into only cancer cells, not healthy cells, so that a laser can be directed to destroy only the cancer cells. The road to her success was hard and she used the words from The Little Engine That Could to keep her going, “I think I can, I think I can.”

Learn More:	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadiyah-Nicole_Green http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2016/01/09/black-female-physicist-pioneers-technology-that-kills-cancer-cells-with-lasers/ http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2016/01/a_story_of_perseverance_hadiyah_nicole_green_shares_her_path_to_earning/ http://www.tuskegee.edu/academics/colleges/ceps/ceps_special_programs/phd_program_in_materials_science_engineering/facultystaff/dr_hadiyah-nicole_green2.aspx

STEAM NEWS from Summer 2016: 18-Year-Old Invents Mug That Charges Phones

 

Teenager Ann Makosinski invented a coffee mug that can charge your phone and a flashlight that is powered by the heat of your hand!

She was inspired by a friend in the Philippines who did not have electricity at home and by tinkering at home, always making things. She also worked hard in school, especially in Math and Science.

 

Learn more at:

• http://www.popsci.com/this-18-year-old-invented-coffee-mug-that-can-charge-your-phone-0
• http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/dec14/vol72/num04/Tinkering-Is-Serious-Play.aspx