Kids engineer fun at Penn State
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ERIE -- Gary Quinn III's engineering experience had, until recently, been limited to breaking the wheels off one toy car to attach them to another.
But this month, the Diehl Elementary School sixth-grader cheered as he watched a car he helped design race across a finish line.
Gary and 21 other students from Diehl in Erie and Rolling Ridge Elementary School in Harborcreek competed in the annual PlastCar Invitational at Penn State Behrend.
The competition, now in its fourth year, brings sixth-graders together with Behrend plastics engineering technology students to design, build and race Hot Wheels-sized cars. The race, the culmination of months of work, drew about 115 people to Behrend's Erie Hall.
Jonathan Meckley, an associate professor of engineering at Behrend, said the project is a fun way to get students interested in engineering at a young age.
And working with sixth-graders also helps the engineering students learn how to communicate with people who might not understand high-level engineering concepts, he said.
"I think the biggest thing my students get out of this for the past three years is they're taking engineering classes with other people who know how to speak the same language," Mr. Meckley said.
The PlastCar project helps prepare them for when they'll have to talk with customers and vendors who might not have the same in-depth engineering knowledge, he said.
Seven teams of students were chosen from Diehl and Rolling Ridge after each school submitted car designs to Mr. Meckley's engineering class. The engineering students then used the drawings to develop 3-D plastic models of the car designs.
Psychology and engineering students in the engineering psychology course also designed life-size interior models of the cars and tabletop trade-show displays for each of the cars.
Behrend senior Chris Mann teamed up with Rolling Ridge students to build "Spot's Dog House," a mini-car shaped like a doghouse. Mr. Mann said he worked with the students by "imagining I'm in sixth grade and what I would understand."
The project lets sixth-graders take a design from concept to the finished product and gives them a glimpse of a field they could be part of in the future, Mr. Mann said.
Being a part of the doghouse team had Olivia Purpura thinking about the future.
"We learned a lot about engineering, and now we think of it as a career choice," the 11-year-old said.
Gary and two classmates came up with their design -- a car shaped like a boat -- after watching the movie "Titanic."
Gary said he enjoyed learning about the engineering process. He's not rethinking his career choice -- he wants to become an archaeologist -- but he said it was fun to see his design speed down the elevated track.
Students hollered and cheered as the competition came down to a final contest between two Diehl cars, one shaped like a toilet, the other like a lollipop.
In the end, the lollipop prevailed.
Mariah Peebles helped design the winning car with classmates Tessa Simon and Nicole Stephens.
"It proves that girls do rule," Mariah said.
First Published December 26, 2008 12:00 am
