Wednesday, June 6th

What a fabulous day! Our time was filled with engineering boats, building robots, and designing a safe way to drop an egg from a balcony.

Our morning began with breakfast and watching a slide show of photos from yesterday. This is always a highlight. Kids have so much fun reliving the activities from the day before and catching up on what the other group experienced. It is like a live social media experience.

Red group ventured over to Elings Hall where they met up with Dr. Camille Slone Schroeder. Dr. Schroeder is an ISU Extension and Outreach specialist in the College of Engineering. She engaged the kids in coding activities and building robots using LEGOs. Students started with learning how coding requires engineers and computer programmers to break down steps and be very precise in their coding. They did this through providing instructions (codes) to their peers (human robots). Laughter abounded as kids relied on each other to avoid various obstacles. Students put their new coding knowledge to use with LEGO robots. They used computers to code the robots and complete mazes.

Gold group stayed in Lagomarcino Hall (ISU School of Education) to learn about boats. We started with discussing mass, volume, density, and force. This all leads to buoyancy and why boats float. Working with Dr. Chris Whitmer of Parametric Studio, Inc, students worked in virtual environments to design, test, and alter boats that would win a race. Students had to pay special attention to the shape of their boat to make it as hydrodynamic as possible.

The program we used was called DESCARTES. It is designed to allow for multiple tests and simulations in a virtual environment before actually building in the real world. This helps engineers save time and money. We will build and race the boats we designed tomorrow afternoon. Since Red group engaged in DESCARTES in the afternoon, we will all get to race each other.

Lunch was delicious walking tacos and strawberries. We also had plenty of time to make memories and laugh. Lunch is one of the best times for kids to talk about what they have experienced so far and ask questions about going to college at Iowa State.

In the afternoon, the Red group worked on DESCARTES like the Gold group had in the morning. Like the Red group did yesterday, Gold group spent the afternoon in Howe Hall with working with Make to Innovate (M:2:I) and aerospace engineers to learn about how aerospace engineering is used in the world around us. Students watched videos of airplanes, rockets, and cars to see what happens when engineering goes right, and wrong. Students help engineers do flips with the quadracopter and land it. Students spent an hour in the ISU flight simulator learning about the pitch, roll, and yaw of flying planes. Several students had an opportunity to take off, fly, and land a plane in the simulator. Finally, students were challenged to drop an egg 12 feet without it cracking. The challenge: they could only use 5 pieces of printer paper and clear tape. Students’ designs were innovative and quite successful! All but two groups had eggs that survived the fall!

We are having a blast! Tomorrow is our last day. Can you believe it?