Green-Zone COVID gathering limits demanded the Queen’s Engineering-hosted club, Black Youth in STEM, gather only in small groups when the members and Queen’s Engineering student leaders came together one recent Sunday in the wide-open space of the John Machin Soccer Park in East Kingston.
The main goal of the event was to have a culminating in-person activity where the instructors could interact with the local youth members and their families directly. Since its inception last fall, the Black Youth in STEM clubs have only met online.
In the “What a Reaction” club, kids in grades 1-4 took turns testing the reaction of various cola beverages with Mentos. Later on, the grade 5-8 kids in the “Taking Flight” club met with members of the Queen’s AISES Rocket Team, a team comprised of both Black and Indigenous students in Queen’s Engineering. After a non-flight demonstration of the Q-AISES competition rocket, the Black Youth in STEM participants were able to launch the miniature kit rockets they had built during their online club sessions.
