E-Week 2008

So it's Engineers Week or E-Week for short. This time period (actually stretched out over a month) is devoted to educating young people about careers in engineering. I volunteered last year so I decided to participate again in 2008.

So yesterday morning around 9 AM I drove out to Rombout Middle School which is located in Beacon and met up with my co-worker and co-educator for the day. We checked in with the security guard and met our host teacher, Mr. Morris. He actually reminded me a lot of a professor I had in college who taught a history of jazz class. Mr. Morris is a science teacher of some sort.

So around 9:50 AM the first class rolled in. Demographically most classes were 70/30 male/female with about 1/3 "minorities" - I'm classifying anyone who isn't "white" (not counting Hispanics as white) as a minority.

Mr. Morris first gave a brief summary of our purpose and his expectations for the class. Then my co-educator and I introduced ourselves, told the class a bit about our jobs and what engineering is in general. Then we moved on to describe our activity which was an egg drop. I actually did a similar activity when I was in middle school Science Olympiad called naked egg drop where we built a container to drop a raw egg into.

However today the activity was a standard egg drop meaning we had to build a container around an egg and drop the whole enclosure from a height of 10 feet onto a hard surface. The materials provided were:

- newspaper
- marshmallows
- wooden skewers
- construction paper
- scotch tape
- raw egg

Each material had an associated cost and maximum number allowed. The total budget for the project wasn't to exceed $200 in imaginary money. For instance each marshmallow cost $20.

The students were told to get into teams of 2-5 members, start by brainstorming a design, sketching it and out and costing it. Once they showed they had a design that was under budget we allocated the materials for the build phase.

During the entire activity my co-educator and I scuttled around the room from group to group asking them if they had questions or required any sort of assistance. It was apparent that some students were quite reserved and sat on the sidelines rather than actively participate in the project.

However 95% of the students were quite enthusiastic about it and hashed out some pretty radical designs. The standard design simply wrapped the egg in layers of newspaper and surrounded the egg in marshmallows. The whole package was then secured with scotch tape. Some more radical designs involved parachutes, wooden skewers acting like stilts, or ripping the marshmallows in half and sticking the pieces directly to the egg. The latter idea actually resembles the airbags on the martian rover landing pods.

After the builds were done Mr. Morris took each pod, climbed to the top of a ladder and held the pod against the ceiling to a height of 10 feet. He then asked the team how much their design cost and what materials were used. Then the class gave a count down...5...4...3....2...1...drop. In most designs it wasn't evident immediately if the egg had survived the fall. Most students tried to guess based on the sound the capsule made upon contacting the floor. Often times it would appear the egg survived but after cutting open the pod we'd see the ominous goo staining the newspaper. The students would groan 'Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww' and then toss their failed creation into the garbage. Sometimes in more exposed designs the egg would literally explode scattering the yolk on the protective garbage bag. Some kids would really freak out over the sight of the egg. One girl almost had a panic attack and was screaming 'EEEEEWW...egg yolk...EEWW EEWW EWW!' A few designs did work and for classes with multiple successes the lowest cost pod won.

Overall the kids were all very enthusiastic and energetic about the process. They all gathered round the drop site and counted down. Some had questions about engineering, others seemed to just enjoy the process of designing, building, and testing. We wrapped up the class by talking a bit more about engineering as a career, fielded any questions, and handed out prizes - e-Week cups that changed color when different temperature liquids were poured in them and keychain carabeeners with LED light.

It was quite a fun and rewarding experience but there were some things I noticed about teaching. It became a challenge to remember what I had already said when teaching classes back-to-back-to-back, etc. Also I could feel myself losing enthusiasm after doing the same exact activity so many times. I can only wonder if real teachers feel this drain if they teach 6 periods of the same class and teach the same class every year.

I do enjoy working with the kids though and I imagine that's the main source of energy and inspiration the teachers use to get them through the day. That and plenty of coffee.