The hallways of Laurel Mountain Elementary School were filled with cars and airplanes made of paper, tape and straws March 6, 2015 as students learned about the day-to-day life of professional engineers during Discover Engineer Day.
The professional engineers visited all grade levels to speak to classes about what engineering entails while students tapped into their creativity during hands-on engineering projects.
“Laurel Mountain has participated in Discover Engineering Day for a number of years, and it’s an event that children and parents look forward to,” said Jan Richards, Laurel Mountain principal. “The program is yet another way that we use the expertise of our community to enrich the instruction that we are providing to the students.”
During the event, the engineers guided students through age-appropriate engineering projects like the airplanes and cars, which they raced in the hallways. Stephen Ziegler, mechanical engineer at Keysight Technologies, worked with fourth-grade students to make breath-powered cars out of construction paper, straws, Life Savers candy and tape.
Through the project, Ziegler said it was important to show the real-life applications of math and science and various roles of engineers to encourage the kids to stay engaged with STEM courses, Ziegler said.
“Discover Engineering Day is a great program because the students get to see from a real world perspective what engineers do,” Ziegler said. “Everyone thinks about the engineer building something, but we also talked about how engineers break stuff or work on instruments. There’s a lot of different things engineers do.”
