Can’t Handle The Pressure
About the Teacher
Mr. Calderon is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin with a bachelors degree in Psychology (Pre-Med) and a Masters degree in counseling from St. Edwards University. He has been a middle school teacher for Pflugerville I.S.D. at Westview Middle School for 7 years. He has taught 6th, 7th, and 8th grade math and science. He has also been a cheerleading coach and a boys soccer coach for at Westview for 4 years. The Westview Middle School Cheerleading team achieved a National Championship in 2010 and a Regional Championship in 2012. The boys soccer team also recently won the district championship for P.I.S.D. in May of 2012. Mr. Calderon is also a GED instructor for Austin Community College where he has personally achieved over 120 graduates from program. Mr. Calderon’s philosophy in teaching and coaching is to create a positive, comfortable environment where students have the ability to learn and excel. He is an avid chess player and always enjoys a quick game to keep his students engaged. During his off time, Mr. Calderon enjoys spending time with his daughters (Victoria -15 and Isabella-7) bike riding, swimming and golfing. As an ongoing project of 6 years, Mr. Calderon has volunteered time to collect blankets and clothing for Austin’s homeless as well as donations for the Boys Scouts Club #2 in his home town of Chihuahua, Mexico. He is excited to join this wonderful organization and looks forward to spending time this summer with his new students.
A note from the teacher & some of the things the campers learned while in camp
Our campers this week, will be great engineers if they choose to!
After introducing some of the main components to generate energy without using electricity, we named them and sketched them: several gears, a pressurized air+water tank, and a water storage tank.
By constructing some models, we learnt to read and follow an order, to decode instructions, to identify different elements, and to choose the right way to join them to make the system work correctly. Furthermore we learnt about Boyle’s law, which states that for a fixed amount of gas kept at a fixed temperature, the product of the volume and pressure is constant.
After this principle, we built an excavator propelled by air and water.
For Splash Day, we made an artistic water bucket that we later used outdoors to experience Newton’s Third Law of Motion: we filled the bucket and swung it quickly; we realized that we didn’t get wet. Because of the bucket’s speed and its centripetal force, the water pushed back against the bottom and didn’t fall out!
