This Belgian topic takes you on an fascinating voyage starting with the Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator and ending with the present-day google street view technology. On the way you learn how maps used to be made and are still made. You design and make your own measuring instruments which you use to measure angles and heights. You learn to calculate your position on Earth by using nothing but the Sun and your watch and you are shown how to make an app that will point you the correct direction to find a secret location. All this knowledge will finally guide you on a challenging tour through your own home town which you will represent in a Google Earth tour and even 360° surround pictures.
The Greek topic introduces you to Democritus and how he conceived the idea of the “atom”. It submerges you in the world of neutrons, protons and quarks and leads you to CERN, Europe’s advanced research centre. You learn about particles but also about Democritus’ mathematical approach to calculating the volume of a cone. You not only analyse the spectrum of light and gasses, but also how different kinds of matter produce their own sounds and how you can use this knowledge to build your own musical instrument.
The Swedish topic leads you on the path of “observation”. You watch and photograph nature and you transform everyday pictures into real works of art. You observe and register nature and natural phenoma like wind, precipitation and temperature. You build your own weather station and like Pehr Wilhem Wargentin you analyse results and make statistics on which predictions can be based. Finally you also observe the sky and study the solar and lunar eclipse and even calculate the height of a mountain on the moon by simply starting from the length of a shadow.
Marconi took a quantum leap in sending messages: he made them invisible and travel through air. In the Italian topic you not only learn and test the science behind this fascinating achievement, you will even build your own messaging equipment which will allow you to send Morse coded messages. And decoding them will result in you realizing a magnificent painting.
STEAM 6 lets you think about our future. Might we ever have to leave Planet Earth? Just in case … let’s be prepared. Let’s take Harry Martinson’s epic novel Aniara seriously, and let’s study Herman Potočnik Noordung’s ideas about travelling to and living in space. Let’s even test the physics behind a spring system for launching a projectile. And before all let’s make sure our future on another planet is comfortable enough by creating our own biosphere.