STEAM, STEM With Art Is Busting Out All Over
STEAM or STEM? Why incorporate Art into learning Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (S.T.E.M.)? The Answer?: “Grab Them by Their Imaginations and Their Hearts and Minds Will Follow!” I became a S.T.E.A.M. - "Engine of Ingenuity" instead of just a S.T.E.M. on a tree, so to speak, when I saw a picture of an awesome bridge. In my mind's eye, I saw not the bridge, rather, I saw the equation of a parabola. That is when I started appreciating the mathematics of overpasses and suspension bridges. I found mathematical representations of these images in engineering books, and I began to understand the math they were describing, as my High School Physics teacher described the same thing in class. “AWE …,” my breath would catch as I drove by a freeway overpass and envisioned the parabolic equation that represented it. I would modify the parameters in the overpass’ parabolic algorithm to stretch or steepen it. I bega