Engineering Explorations 2009

This past Monday was Explorations 2009. Explorations is an outreach event that is run every term for elementary school students in grades 6, 7 and 8. The students are toured around the campus and shown different things that people are working on within engineering.

I volunteered as a tour guide for the evening and brought a group of about 8 interested students around to our various stops. They all had lots of fun and learned a lot about what engineering is all about.

Some of the highlights of the tour were:
-the autonomous landmine detectors which are being built by the UW Robotics Group
-the Connect 4 robot which is able to play the game connect 4 (and it usually wins!)
-the geological display where the kids were shown how quicksand occurs and were able to simulate an earthquake
-the Solar car which runs entirely on solar energy that has been collected by the solar panels covering the entire car

I think Explorations is a great event and such a fun way to introduce young students to engineering!