Don Reeves, 4-H Club Grant Report
Posted by Wes Bradford
on Jun 17, 2014
Don Reeves reviewed how our Rotary District Community Grant is helping to fund our Palos Verdes 4-H Club projects. We have participated in 3 of these projects, to be presented tonight.
Dee Keese discussed the history of the 4-H Clubs, the oldest youth organization in the US. They started from the Land Grants to fund new state colleges under the Lincoln administration. Information for agricultural development was presented, but farmers were resistant to trying new ways, such as crop rotation. This concept became a 4-H Club demonstration project, which was successful and influenced a new generation of farmers. Now, there are many more types of projects, not necessarily related to agriculture. The Palos Verdes 4-H Club started in 1953 and has 130 children participating. Over 30 projects were presented at a fair, in which they won 31 out of 37 awards.
Rachel Klose, who won a state competition as a harpist, is club president this year. She described her computer programming project to design controlling mechanisms for devices. There is a hobby kit with various pieces such as wires, sensors, electronic components and displays, which can be used to design and build a prototype of a device and share it on the Internet, and some of these could become commercially successful. (Three girls in her group won science fair awards in Los Angeles.)
Nathan McPhaul, a 4-H team leader at a dog show, presented a display on managing dog injuries and dog care, such as a broken tail or other trauma. He showed how an emergency muzzle can be made quickly from a belt or necktie to help safely manage an injured dog.
Wesley Rich, with his sister, Glenys, showed several rocket models and described their rocketry project, in which they built and launched a rocket to a predetermined altitude with a raw hen’s egg cargo, and then landed it without breaking the egg. (The first attempt broke the egg.) They used an accelerometer and GPS device to graph the forces on the egg (over 100 G's) versus time and altitude during the flight and the landing shock, in order to improve the design. The rocket separates and a parachute top shot at the maximum altitude. They placed high in the national competition, and beat all the high school teams from California (although he is in junior high). The group also toured the Space-X facility in Hawthorne.