ADAMS TWP — More than 70 fifth graders at the Mars Centennial School on Thursday presented their thought-provoking and high-tech projects at the school's first STEAM Expo.

STEAM stands for science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics.

The 72 students in the classrooms of Jen Blasko, Sharyn Lipnicky and Tammy Mitchell worked in teams during the last few weeks on Math Stop-Motion Animation Videos, Lego Robotic Cars and Powtoon Tall Tales, which involves animated presentation cartoons.

On Thursday morning, a handful of teams in Mitchell's classroom displayed their robotics prowess in a project that engaged thinking and team-building.

In the Lego Robotic Cars project, Mitchell explained, the teams were assigned one of five challenges; mountain rescue, pizza delivery, an ambulance on a heliport, a fire truck or a school bus.

The teams then had to use their recent science lesson on Isaac Newton's three laws of motion to make the vehicles go a specific distance in a specific time frame to arrive at a specific point, Mitchell said.

“This is a way for them to incorporate these laws of motion into the challenges,” Mitchell said.

The teams also named their businesses and created business cards.

Technology coordinator Colleen Hinrichsen said the projects built teamwork skills and made the students think outside the box.

“They get to apply what they learn in science class in a real-life situation,” she said.

Madelyn Ostaphchenko and her team chose the school bus project, in which they had to figure out how to get the Lego car that represented a school bus to leave the bus garage, pick up four students, and arrive at the school in 20 seconds.

The team placed the tiny wooden students and stop signs on a yardstick for the project, which Madelyn said came with challenges.

“It either went too long or too short,” she said. “It took a long time to get it right.”

Her mother, Rita Ostapchenko, was impressed with the outcome of her daughter's team.

“Theirs actually worked without running into the school or running over any passengers,” she said. “It's a wonderful learning experience to program robotic cars. I couldn't even begin to know what they know.”

Another team displayed their project, which was to get a fire truck to a burning building in under 20 seconds. The truck, again represented by the Lego car, also had to stop exactly three centimeters from the building.

The latter requirement presented the biggest challenge to the team.

“The coding definitely was the biggest challenge because you have to make it stop within three centimeters, and we still haven't accomplished that,” said team member Logan Santa.

Logan's dad, Jimmy Santa, said the projects may stimulate learning because they are hands-on.

“I learn better with hands-on tasks,” Santa said.

Parent Lisa Sommers agreed, and said the project benefited the team in other ways.

“It also teaches them team skills by working with others,” Sommers said.

Student Emma Peters and her team displayed on a laptop the stop-action movie they created using the Windows Movie Maker program.

Emma explained that the team took 765 digital pictures to make the movie, which uses sections of a Hershey bar to teach fractions. The team used all but two of the pictures.

“My finger was in them, so we couldn't use them,” Emma said of the pair of discarded shots.

The biggest challenge for the team, Emma said, was keeping the camera perfectly still so the movie wouldn't look choppy when the photos were strung together.

She said the project was educational, but also fun.

“We had party scenes, so we just had fun throwing confetti around,” Emma said.

Mitchell said the STEAM Expo was funded through a grant from the PPG Foundation. She hopes to offer the project again next year.

“The students far exceeded what we expected for a first-time project,” Mitchell said.