Grades 7-8: Register Now for MIT SPARK, Mar. 17-18

Events

MIT’s SPARK offers students in Grades 7 and 8 a variety of short, interesting classes on the MIT campus over one weekend, March 17-18.  The registration lottery is open now through March 4, and until that deadline all course preferences will be treated equally in the lottery.  Starting March 5, any remaining seats will be open first-come/first-served.  Students may choose from over 150 courses and must register on their own.  A $40 fee covers two days of classes and lunch and lots of walk-in activities.  Generous financial aid is available.  For more information not covered here, email spark@mit.edu.   Here are the STEM courses:

  • Kerbal Space Program — Relax, It’s Just Rocket Science
  • Exploring Aerospace!
  • Understanding IQ with Computational Neuroscience
  • Lasers 101
  • Geoengineering and Climate Change
  • Microbiome 101: What’s in your poop?
  • The Plague
  • Don’t Touch the King Cobra: An Exploration of Venomous Creatures
  • Evolution revolution: why Darwin was wrong
  • What makes a dinosaur a dinosaur?
  • Are you a SuperTaster? The Neuroscience of Taste
  • Intro to MRI- the anatomy of a kiwi
  • Synthetic Biology with Intermittent Soccer Bowling Breaks
  • What’s in the Vial? An Introduction to Bioanalytical Techniques
  • Babies and Brains
  • CRISPR: Hacking the Genome
  • Dazed and Confused: The Science and Art of Illusions
  • Mathematical Gems
  • Cellular Automata
  • Probability Paradoxes, Puzzles and Games
  • All’s Fair In Chess and Cake
  • Mathematical Modeling
  • All about symmetry
  • How to Win Games
  • Bridges, Maps, and Networks: An Introduction to Graph Theory
  • Hats On
  • Math Meets Art!
  • Finite Automata
  • Introduction to Trading
  • Clever Codes
  • Surreal Numbers and Games
  • Detecting fake news
  • Fun with groups
  • Atomic Theory I: The Basics
  • Quantum Computing
  • How do you generate electricity from water?
  • Atomic Theory II: Modern Concepts
  • A Brief Tour of the Stratosphere
  • Atomic Theory III: Mostly Particle Physics
  • Let’s Talk about Weather!
  • Anything you could want to know about the oceans
  • Your classical intuition is wrong!
  • Science of Swimming: 6 ways to dramatically improve your swimming skills using basic physiology and physics concepts
  • Special Relativity
  • Exploring Electricity and Magnetism; The Basics
  • How We Make Energy
  • Dark Matter: A History and Where We Are Now
  • Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
  • Sounds, Waves, and Electricity
  • Cool Experiments You Can Do in the Home
  • All about ocean water!
  • Intro to Astronomy!
  • Biochemistry at its finest [MEDICINE and FOOD]