Free Webinar Series — ‘NASA STEM Mania: STEM in Sports’

Written by Nathan Smith on March 5, 2015. Posted in STEM and STEAM.

Kick off your classroom activities with “NASA STEM Mania: STEM in Sports”! This series of free virtual professional development webinars for educators will help you hit an education home run. Pre-game connections begin at 3:30 p.m. ET and webinars begin at 4 p.m. ET.

Upcoming webinar events include:

March 5, 2015 — Spaced Out Sports
Learn to apply Newton’s Laws of Motion by designing, or redesigning, a game for astronauts to play on the International Space Station. As students design a new sport, they will explore Newton’s Laws of Motion and how Earth’s gravity affects objects.

March 9, 2015 — It’s All in Your Head: NASA Investigates Techniques for Measuring Intracranial Pressure
Do you ever turn your world upside down by standing on your head? After a few minutes you might feel pressure in your face and around your skull. This is because headstands invert the body’s blood flow, pushing more blood toward your head. Astronauts in microgravity experience something similar. Let’s investigate how noninvasive techniques being explored by NASA also can be used in sports whose participants are prone to head injuries.

March 10, 2015 — Soccer Ball Aerodynamics and the Forces of Flight
What do planes and soccer balls have in common? Join this session to learn more about the principles of aerodynamics involved with flying. See the aerodynamics test of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Soccer ball.

March 11, 2015 — NASA Sports Spinoffs
Many technologies developed for space have found uses on Earth. Sunglasses, the computer mouse, magnetic resonance imaging, smoke detectors, quartz watches and bar codes are just a few of the 30,000 commercial applications of space technology that have entered the consumer market since the 1950s. NASA invests in contracts with small businesses for innovations that can be adapted to space applications.

March 12, 2015 — International Toys in Space
Would you like to see astronauts try to play basketball or soccer in space? Join the fun for these hands-on, minds-on physics lesson in space.

To register for these webinars, and to see a full list of webinars taking place through March 19, 2015, visit http://tinyurl.com/qz74zzb.

Questions about this series of webinars should be directed to Kelly Hartford at kelly.a.hartford@nasa.gov and/or Lester Morales at lester.morales@nasa.gov.

Nathan Smith

Nathan Smith is Director of Technology for the College of Education and Human Services at Utah State University. In that role, he also directs The Adele & Dale Young Education Technology Center (The YETC) located in room 170 of the Education Building on Utah State University's Logan campus. The YETC is a combination student openaccess computer facility, a K12 curriculum materials library, a NASA Educator Resource Center for Utah, and a technology training center. Nathan served eight years (20042012) on the Board of Directors for the Utah Coalition for Education Technology (UCET) He was reelected in 2014 to serve another two year term on the board. A former elementary school teacher, Nathan has taught students every age from young children to senior citizens. He has had the opportunity beginning in 2011 to train international high school teachers from all over the world about technology in education, through the U.S. State