All STEM Leads to Rome 3: 600 Museum Visitors? Knot a Problem!

For the third year in a row, my students and I offered a STEM in classics outreach program called "All STEM Leads to Rome" at a local museum in Baton Rouge. This museum is the PERFECT venue for our work. The Louisiana Art and Science Museum focuses on science in art and vice versa.

One of the first exhibits I saw there featured the work of legendary NASA artist Robert McCall. When I noticed classical allusions in his art, I developed a unit on his work for my Latin students. The museum director connected me with the artist himself, whom I got to speak with via phone. He even sent me some of his own slides, treasured items to this day.

The interdisciplinary work that I did as a result of my inspiration attracted a reporter with the local newspaper who did a story on me and my Latin-in-space lessons. It's a really cool memory. I still nerd out on Latin in space. After all, the motto of Jeff Bezos' space exploration company, Blue Origin, is GRADATIM FEROCITER. It's an area I like to watch for inspiration.

But back to our event...this year we brought back mosaics. Years ago, when I started teaching mosaics, I found Lawrence Payne at Roman Mosaic Workshops. Not only does Lawrence make beautiful Roman-style mosaics for museums and businesses in England, but he also loves to teach what he does to others. His lessons are amazing. Watching his YouTube channel, I began to learn how much STEM is involved in designing mosaics. 

I've done a whole unit on mosaic design and production in my Roman Technology class. Thanks to Lawrence, I love to teach the Solomon's knot design. It's an easy, traditional Roman design that anyone can do with little training. For this year's LASM event, I wanted to let visitors try out building their own so I made some large templates, and we used some already-cut tesserae to try out setting them up. The results were dazzling! Other than catapults, this station seemed to get the most interest.

A tiny museum visitor builds a mosaic.

Students teach mosaic design to visitors.

We offered 4 types of marble for design.
The black tesserae are from Nero marble.

After training for a couple of years, my former student, now an alum of the program, demonstrated stone cutting as an ancient Roman tesserae maker would have. Visitors, especially kids, LOVED watching him cut stone on site to use in the mosaics they were designing.

On a hot Sunday afternoon, our little event saw over 600 visitors. My students really enjoyed showing off what they know, and we look forward to another awesome event next year!