The winning entry was from Jasmine, aged 10, whose invention was a pair of portable slime-flinging gauntlets, and Kids Invent Stuff put their engineering abilities together to make this a real piece of crime-fighting gear.
With their latest invention already complete and the video preparing in the background, we caught up with Ruth Amos from Kids Invent Stuff to talk more about the engineering challenges involved in the build process and the inspiration behind their organisation.
Why did you set up Kids Invent Stuff?
Shawn and I met as winners of engineering competitions in the past and have been involved as STEM educators for over a decade. All of the reports we had read covering the shortfall of students studying STEM subjects and particularly the disparity between male and female engineers in industry, pointed to primary school being the time when you should get kids of 4-11 years old encouraged to take an interest in STEM subjects. However, from our time as educators we could see that this was not always happening.
After a while, we decided that we would collaborate and try to provide a solution ourselves, so Kids Invent Stuff was born as a way to show kids just how exciting and accessible engineering could be. We want children to see something that they designed on pen and paper come to life and that it’s not just special people in factories who can build an invention – it’s something that they can work to.
Every invention we make is a new challenge and it can be a lot of fun prototyping a new idea each month instead of iterating on a single product. We’re always amazed by the creativity of the children who send us their ideas and as such, every invention has its unique elements which force us to learn something new, or has a novel solution that meets the initial design that we’ve been sent. Between Shawn and myself we both bring different engineering skills to the table and we make sure to share the workload so we can get each invention and video finished on time, which is sometimes more difficult than others.
Making monthly videos on YouTube is a great way of providing fun and exciting examples of engineering in action and allows us to be super responsive and engage with kids of all skill levels. Some submissions come from kids who don’t necessarily do well in classrooms, but have great ideas and ways of describing them and we want to present engineering as a viable career that they can all work towards. In particular, we want to get more girls in this age group involved in STEM subjects and I feel it’s important to give them a good example of a woman who is a successful mechanical engineer.
Tell us more about the winner – why did they win and what made them stand out?
We get hundreds of entries every month and sometimes there are some that both of us agree are just awesome. Jasmine’s invention was detailed, playful and had a clear idea of how it would work throughout and we think it works really well as an actual invention. As you can see from the video we had a lot of fun working on bringing this one to life!
Tell us about the build process and some of the particular challenges involved
First of all, we had to decide on what kind of slime we were going to use and luckily we have worked with slime before. Both of us are very keen on sustainable materials and we chose to use guar gum, which is environmentally friendly but can still be mixed to be really gloopy, exactly like you would imagine slime to be!
After that, we had to figure out what kind of pumping system to use for the slime, considering compressed air, pumps and so on. We went with a pair of modified diaphragm pumps to maintain pressure for right and left gauntlets while being small and light enough to carry with the rest of the backpack.
After making it as watertight as we could so the wearer wouldn’t get splatted by mistake, we made the system so it could be powered by drill batteries that charge over USB. This makes it really easy to recharge on the go and uses off-the-shelf parts that you can get hold of easily.
Fully laden the pack weighs around 30kg, so it is on the heavy side but is still very portable and useable for sliming!
What advice would you give teachers and parents?
We know that STEM as a subject is vast, too vast for just one person to know everything and be able to answer all the questions they get from children. We say it’s okay to not know everything as long as you know where you can get the answers and resources that you need.
Educators and parents should definitely take advantage of the growing resources out there so they can host their own activities and continue to get kids of all ages excited about STEM subjects. We pride ourselves on not just creating worksheets and projects to use but also working to signpost other useful resources out there, like the IMechE’s STEM at Home activities.
What does the future hold for Kids Invent Stuff?
Despite classrooms being closed for long periods due to COVID restrictions, we are delighted to see our videos grow in popularity and each month we’ve been getting many more inventions being submitted, not just from classrooms but from individual children who are watching our videos and are inspired to design something themselves. We have even seen more viewers tuning in from outside the UK so we hope can continue to grow the channel to reach and inspire the next generation of engineers and mathematicians around the world.
Massive thanks to Ruth and Shawn for their time and for a truly amazing video this month.
If you want to get involved and submit your ideas for their next invention, be sure to visit the Kids Invent Stuff website and follow them on their Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube channels.