Explorations
A spaghetti puzzler?
“I want to learn everything about computers”
 |
| Brandon Campbell and Greg Hartmann with "Conqueror" topping Mount Doom. |
Imagine someone handing you seven pieces of uncooked spaghetti, two straws, a square of corrugated cardboard and an envelope, and asking you to bundle it so that the brittle noodles won’t break when mailed. That’s one assignment the youngest of prospective engineers — age 6 — undertook at the College of Engineering Summer Academy. But there were other equally intriguing puzzles to solve.
During sessions geared toward three age groups, kids up to age 17 learned all sorts of engineering principles as they built balloon-powered rocket cars, egg crash-test dummies, pasta bridges, and designed, built and programmed LEGO Mindstorms robots. These robots moved to music, they crushed cans, they climbed Mount Doom, a ramp built to test the robots’ balance and climbing ability.
“I want to learn everything about computers,” said Greg Hartmann, age 11, a New Berlin Eisenhower School student. “I want to invent things when I get older, anything that can help people.”
Hartmann and buddies Brandon Campbell, age 12, a school mate from New Berlin, Wis., and Shane Wolff, age 16, a student at Catholic Central High School, Burlington, Wis., created “Conqueror,” which, true to its name, mastered Mount Doom on the first attempt. “This is the most fun camp I’ve ever been to,” Campbell said.
Sixty students attended the Summer Academy. After they finished, five teachers from the Milwaukee Academy of Science came to Marquette to participate in a session. What they learned at Marquette, they are now teaching at the K4-12 academy that focuses on science, math and technology.
|
