Newton Public Schools will host its first Community Math Night on November 12, 6:30PM-7:30PM at Brown Middle School (125 Meadowbrook Road).
NPS will discuss important new updates to its math programs, including math pathways and instructional practices. NPS Superintendent Anna Nolin discussed some of these updates in her interview with Fig City News at the start of the school year.
MIT Splash will be held November 22-23 for students in grades 9-12, and new classes have been recently added. Students who missed the lottery deadline or who want to add classes have until 11:59PM on November 13 to register on a first-come, first-served basis. The cost is $60 but generous financial aid is available.
If classes are full, check back and refresh the registration page to see if seats have opened up. STEM-oriented new classes include:
The Newton Highlands Neighborhood Area Council (NHNAC) is presenting its annual Astronomy Night with astronomer John Harrington on November 13, 7PM-8:30PM (rain date: November 14) at the Hyde Community Center Playground (90 Lincoln Street, Newton Highlands). If visibility is questionable, check the NHNAC site for up-to-date informatoin on the event.
Refreshments will be served.
Before the end of the school year last June, the Newton South High School Math Team hosted its first ever Math Festival, a schoolwide exhibition designed to showcase mathematical inquiry among students. Initiated and organized by Math Team captain Jasper He, and under the guidance and supervision of teacher advisor Mr. Charles Petrizzi, several group members got together to create science-fair style posters presenting a wide range of mathematical concepts, and presented them to others in the cafeteria over the 50-minute Lion Block on Tuesday.
The Math Festival’s program was deliberately broad, covering many areas of mathematics. Some presentations included Joshua Park’s (NSHS ’27) Tower of Hanoi strategy guidelines and some approaches to optimizing it; Edison Xiong’s (NSHS ’27) comprehensive introduction to Julia sets; Jared Mi’s (NSHS ’26) Euler’s Totient Function analysis; Simon Meng’s (NSHS ’27) overview of a Klein bottle (which included a display of a 3-D printed model to illustrate its geometry), and more. They were arranged such that attendees could circulate freely, examine the posters they liked, and engage the presenters in discussion.
The Math Team members took turns presenting their projects to students, and all in the school were invited to attend. The goal of the Math Festival was to reach out to all students, but especially to underprivileged students, where mathematics could be made more accessible for them. The format of informal conversations allowed presenters to answer questions rapidly, offer some ideas they had when researching the topic, and offer some resources for further study into their subjects.
Looking forward, the Math Team intends to make the Math Festival an annual event, expanding its outreach components, with future initiatives including invitations to neighboring Oak Hill and Brown Middle Schools, and collaboration to reach students who may benefit the most from these STEM opportunities, spreading a curiosity for mathematics across the student body.
The posters for the presentation online are available on the Newton South Math Team’s blog: https://nshsmathteam.weebly.com/blog
The next event in the Broad Discovery Series will be on November 19, 6PM-7PM, both in-person (Broad Institute Auditorium + Discovery Center, 415 Main Street, Cambridge) and live-streamed. This event is free, open the public, and appropriate for high school students and older.
Broad Clinical Labs CSO Niall Lennon will speak on the intersection of medical genomics, precision medicine, and preventive healthcare in a talk entitled “Entering the Genomic Medicine era: How technology, data, and biology can improve healthcare throughout our lives.” Register here.
The Cambridge Science Carnival will be held Sunday, September 21, Noon-4PM at the Kendall/MIT Open Space (292 Main St, Cambridge). It’s free to attend and hosted by the MIT Museum. Admission to the MIT Museum will be free that day, 10AM-6PM.
There will be over 100 STEAM-oriented exhibit booths, demonstrations, live music, and installations — including:
Robot Petting Zoo, where attendees can drive bots and mini-bots
A “Trash or Treasure?” sorting game hosted by Cambridge Recycling
NSF Center for MONET on the science of soccer
A live recording of the Tumble kids’ science podcast
Interactive demonstrations offered by the MIT Physics Dept.
The Cambridge Science Carnival is traditionally the last day of the multi-day Cambridge Science Festival. For 2025, the event has been compressed to one day. The MIT Museum has indicated that the Cambridge Science Festival will return in 2026 in a reimagined form.
The Carnival has a page about How to Get There by public transportation, bike, car, and foot. The site is a 15-minute walk from the Kendall Square MBTA station. MIT will offer free shuttle bus service to the Carnival from various locations. Parking ($15 ) is available at Hayward Garage (55 Wadsworth Street).
The Discovery Museum in Acton will bring back its First Friday Nights Free starting October 3, courtesy of MathWorks. Free admission from 4:30PM to 8PM on the first Friday of each month, October-June.
It’s not required, but visitors are encouraged to bring a non-perishable food donation to be distributed to the Acton Food Pantry and Open Table.
Newton Community Education is offering these new LEGO workshops on December 11:
See the details and sign up at the links above. Support STEM programming at Newton Community Education.
STEMucation, formed by Newton high-school students, will offer a free STEM workshop — Frozen Fun and Gooey Experiments — for elementary students on Sunday, December 8, from 1PM to 3PM at WPS Instittue (160 Herrick Road, Newton Centre), with which STEMucation is affiliated. The event aims to offer young learners engaging opportunities to explore STEM in a fun and interactive environment. Register here.
October 21-25 is Massachusetts STEM Week. Events scheduled for the MetroWest area include: