BRAIN STEM

A campus-wide lab for the day

In labs, shops and classrooms, UND faculty and students turned foundational concepts into tactile moments:

• CSI: Junior Investigators Workshop: Aprons and hairnets on, students isolated DNA from strawberries and learned how genetic evidence supports real-life investigations.

• Spaghetti Bridge Activity: In classic engineering fashion, teams designed, built, and then broke their noodle spans—learning about loads, trusses and failure the fun way.

• Tech Tinker Lab: Students coded LED animations while connecting circuits, logic and automation to everyday tech.

• How Robots See the World: Cameras, lidar and sensor fusion came to life as students tested object detection and learned how autonomous systems “perceive.”

• Airfoil Assembly Challenge: Paper, foam and imagination became mini wing sections, sparking chatter about airfoils, angle of attack and Bernoulli’s principle.

• Water Treatment Challenge: Blue water, limited budget: students optimized clarity vs. cost, learning tradeoffs that real plants face every day.

• Phun with Fisics & Möbius Strip Magic: From counterintuitive surfaces to momentum, these sessions made math and physics feel like actual magic.

• Color-Changing Pigments & Paints: Natural dyes met acids and bases; students painted take-home art that shifted hues with pH.

• Science Behind the Diagnosis: Medical laboratory science opened a window into the testing that informs patient care.

• Biopolymer Design: Chemical engineering showed up in slime and juice boba, turning polymers into a kid-friendly design problem.

• Will it Build?: A 3D-printable concrete mix demo connected materials science to tomorrow’s construction sites.