National 4-H celebrate National Youth Science Day

To kick off National 4-H week, the Carson City Cooperative Extension hosted its annual 4-H National Youth Science Day on Saturday.

A dozen kids and their guardians gathered at the Cooperative Extension to learn about drones as a part of the National Youth Science Day in order to give children an interactive learning experience focused around science, technology, engineering and math. This year, the Cooperative Extension decided to focus on drones because of their wide variety of use.

“They are going through what is a drone and introducing how farmers can use drones for crops or they can be used in the civic field with building collapses to find survivors,” said Lindsay Chichester, Cooperative Extension extension educator. “It offers some real life applications.”

The students went through a variety of activities to learn more about drones as well as the science behind flight. Jim Barcellos, 4-H Youth Development for the Cooperative Extension, taught the students the importance of drag, gravity and wind when trying to fly items. The students were able to participate in a number of hands on learning activities such as flying prop-copters to learn about how wind impacts flight and make a foam glider form paper plates. At the end of the day, the children were able to fly a drone to take video and photos off it and map their trajectory.

“My grandpa told me about this and I thought it would be interesting because I am into drones and robots and technology,” said Grant Kohlmann, 14.

The students also learned about the different terminology associated with drones, the different sorts of drones and the regulations that surround them.

Chichester said it is important to have days like these because 4-H is about robotics as well and science is an important part of the organization.

“Science helps apply the practical side for mechanisms with the hows and whys of everything,” Chichester said. “We want to encourage children to ask why and experiment with how things work in life.

“This is good because 4-H is often stereotyped as cows and crops and it is so much more than that, it is robotics and such so it is good to be able to highlight the other things 4-H does.”