The Cliff at Briarcliff High School boasts a math lab, where students can get help with math homework throughout the day. It also has a writing lab, where students can work with an English teacher on a variety of writing assignments, including college essays.
This year, the school launched an engineering lab.
The lab, which is open every day during periods 5A and 5B (11:36 am – 12:24 pm) is run by computer science and engineering teacher Chris Lo.
It is open to all students, regardless of background or abilities.
Since it is during lunch period, students can bring their lunch into the classroom and use the time to either get extra help with any of their engineering courses or engage in a variety of STEM activities.
Members of the BearBOTS – the school’s robotics team – also use the lab to work on their robots for competitions. Many students like to do 3D printing with either a printer or a 3D printing pen, while others enjoy building objects using STEM kits or even designing and building their own unique items.
Matthew, a junior who takes the “Introduction to Engineering” class with Mr. Lo, uses the lab to work on a version of a CRT television model, which is the traditional bulky TV set that is now outdated.
“I made a 3D printed prototype for the monitor in the shape of the tube which will generate crude images, so it won’t be a high-quality monitor,” he said. “I’ll use a raspberry pi, which is a mini computer, and it will show the images.”
“Matthew learned concepts of design and basic sketching in my class, as well as 3D printing techniques,” Lo said. “He also learned some cardboard techniques, so he built a housing for his television set out of cardboard to the 3D model that he printed.”
“I’ll probably eventually make the cardboard housing out of filament on the 3D printer,” Matthew said.
According to Lo, one of the purposes of the engineering lab is to encourage any Briarcliff student to come in with an idea for drawings or plans that they can look at together with him and determine how to move forward.
“I hope students can be inspired to build something and create a project with just an idea, but for students who want to build something but do not have an idea, we have STEM kits,” he said.
The STEM kits are step-by-step kits from KiwiCo’s Eureka line, which are made for teenagers and which Lo purchased with his own money.
Alex, a freshman, built some of the items from the kits.
“I take ‘Introduction to Engineering,’ but I like to come to the lab to do work outside of the classroom,” he said. “I was originally planning on doing some 3D printing, but then I saw those kits and decided to try them. I built a pinball machine and a playing cards shuffler without any help; I just followed the instructions, which were simple. I think someone my age, or even younger, would be able to do them.”
Students at Briarcliff Middle School enter the high school with basic knowledge of 3D printing. The Engineering Lab allows them to do more advanced projects.
“Sometimes students come to the lab with an idea of something to print, like a mug, and we help them figure out how to print it,” Lo said. “They can also use our 3D pens to make cool projects.”
There is no end to creativity when it comes to the Engineering Lab – students can even build costumes.
“A student in my “Introduction to Engineering” class came into the lab to build a costume prop to take to a Comic Convention,” Lo said. “She is doing Cosplay, so she wants to build a scythe that her character carries. We helped her figure out the materials and the most efficient way to build it, so that the pieces won’t fall apart, and now she has the idea and material list and is trying to figure out how to build it and take it home.”
Lo hopes that some students who come to the lab might get inspired to take one of his or Ted Sandomenico’s engineering classes.
“We want to bring more students into STEM,” he said. “Creating things in the lab can help inspire students to learn more about engineering and have a deeper understanding of how things work.
“The lab has components of the two other labs at the school – it requires some math and some technical writing. I like to say that the Engineering Lab encompasses the trifecta of the three core foundational areas in engineering: math, writing and technology.”
