For the third year in a row, ITAM held a Summer Camp for children in cooperation with Mad Science, a company that provides children with interactive experiences involving science and nature.

The Camp is divided into three, week-long courses. The topics this year were Physical Phenomena in Nature, Recharged Robotics, and Space and Beyond.

The children in the first course, Physical Phenomena in Nature, learned about and experimented with basic physics principles, such as the force of gravity, inertia, air pressure, magnetic fields and electricity, and on their own they were also able to find answers to their questions. Julieta, nine years old, said: “What most impressed me was electricity; there was a ball and you’d put your hands there and it made all your hair stick up.” Daniel, 10, agreed: “What I liked most was working with electricity.”

In the Recharged Robotics course held during the second week, youngsters learned about line-following robots, which were made with programmed microcontrollers. To build their own automaton, they used various materials, ranging from wheels and sensors to quartz crystals, diodes, direct current motors, resistors and transformers. Regarding the event, 7-year-old Regina said that what she liked above all were the activities. “My favorite part was when we made a light bulb come on.”

The last course, Space and Beyond, was devoted to teaching the children about space and the bodies that populate it. Through demonstrations, they learned about some of the key characteristics of the solar system components and the forces.