Grant Success Stories

George Washington Middle School will be participating for their first time in the Solar Car Competition hosted at Argonne National Labs. With a grant for solar panels from Science House, the school is able to give all interested students the chance to participate. See the students design documents and cars they built with the panels here.

A few years ago in Beaver County, PA, a coal power plant shot out clouds of black soot, which rained from the sky over Ambridge Junior High School and many neighboring schools and houses in a 1 1/2 mile radius. A recent report on air quality in schools also revealed some frightening results about the levels of pollutants in the air where schools are located. To find out more, Ambridge Junior High School decided to do some independent air quality investigations as part of their environmental science classes. With equipment from Science House Foundation they'll be measuring the levels of particulates, ozone, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and other air quality indicators in their surrounds. The students will be sharing their findings at the end of their investigation.

Does your school wish to investigate the air quality in your area? Science House Foundation is making the air testing kit available on loan to all schools across the US. Email info@sciencehouse.com with your name and school and we'll send the kit to you when it's next available.

Science House Foundation helped out the Quatama LEGObots team by providing them with a LEGO robotics kit and participation fees for the FIRST Lego League Robotics Competition. Since receiving the robot the students have been hard at work and have performed demonstrations at the city council and been featured in the local newspaper.

Science House Foundation also helped to purchase some LEGO robotics kits for Aue Elementary School, Texas and Hollymead Elementary School, Virginia to get their FIRST robotics programs off the ground.

Science House donated physics equipment to a class of students in Kentucky, to help them learn about motion through hands-on experiments.

What better way to teach biology than through enlivening discussions and experiments in biotechnology! Science House funding helped to purchase two biotechnology kits for PCR and gel electrophoresis, for a class of Biology 10th graders.

Playing with robotics helps introduce kids to concepts in math, engineering, electronics and physics in a fun and rewarding way. Science House donated robotics kits to an elementary school class in Louisiana to help them learn about electronics, force, motion, and energy.

Science House donated math games, puzzles and geometric models to a 7th grade class in New York City. These materials will enable the students to learn about math in a visual, manipulative way. In addition, they will provide a challenge for advanced students who are ahead of the class.

Forty five minutes on the computer each week may be enough time to type up an essay or do some basic research, but it's hardly enough to explore the many academic resources available online or to become proficient in computer skills. Science House stepped in and donated two laptop computers to a class of enthusiastic, young students in Brooklyn. With these new laptops, the students will be able to do a lot more computer activities, and develop skills and knowledge that will help them in all their school subjects.

Science House donated electrostatic experiment kits to a high school class in Texas. The school offers advanced academic programs in the sciences, but cannot afford lab equipment to perform challenging experiments. These kits will help the students to develop their understanding of electricity and prepare them for further study in college.

Science House donated a set of 30 calculators to an elementary school class in San Jose, California, where budget cuts across the district have reduced funding for educational supplies. Having calculators will help the students explore different possibilities to solving mathematical problems and enable them to build a mathematical and technological foundation in learning.

Many schools with limited funding find it difficult to afford experimental materials for science classes. To help out, Science House donated some chemistry materials to a school in Chicago. These materials will help students learn chemistry by seeing things pop, fizzle and foam!

Science House donated a desktop computer and LCD monitor to a science class in North Carolina. This equipment will allow the class to make use of educational software that the school owns but does not have enough computers to give students access to. The students will also be able to use some of the great free educational resources online, such as the physics game, Phun, which teaches about the forces that interact in our world.

Geometry is often a hit with kids, but the vocabulary can be daunting, especially for ESL students. Vertex, edge, face, rectangular pyramid, cone, cylinder, quadrilateral, polygon - these are just some of the words that students must master in order to understand plane shapes and 3-dimensional shapes. With fun, hands-on geometry games from Science House, the students will be able to practice old concepts and vocabulary while adding new ones with greater ease.

The BioBus is a biophysics lab on wheels that provides immersive, hands-on lab courses in biology to school students throughout New York City.

Science House recently donated 3 new digital displays that allow dozens of people to see the microscopical world at the same time, in addition to hard drives and other devices that allow us to more effectively communicate science aboard the BioBus

The BioBus is currently looking into technology to upload real-time microscope images to the web, sharing the wonder of biology with more kids.

Many high schools in South Africa face an acute shortage of lab equipment - the lack of even a single laboratory is not uncommon. When students have never seen a chemical reaction, a physics investigation or experimented with biology, its very difficult for them to comprehend what science is all about.

Since 1998, the Mobile Science Laboratory has traveling around the country to help address this problem - by giving students a chance to perform "live", hands-on science, often for the first time in their lives. The lab is fully equipped with everything needed to run experiments, including water tanks, a gas cylinder, chemicals, biological samples and heaps of equipment. Science House recently provided funding towards new equipment, to help provide an even better educational experience for the 7,000 students who get to experience the mobile lab every year.

Science House donated microscopes and biological kits to be used by 60 underprivileged students with learning difficulties in grades 2-5. Now, with a microscope each, the students will be able to work independently and focus on the fascinating world beneath the microscope.

Read a note of thanks from the teacher

Science House donated 100 notebooks to an underprivileged high school science class. The students are using these notebooks to learn to think like scientists - recording scientific questions, proposing hypotheses, designing and implementing experiments and analyzing results.

Read a note of thanks from the teacher