It was "Engineering Day" at the Middle School, and The Company sent a contingent of engineers to the various Science classes to present some material [which had been blessed by The Company Lawyers] in order to promote the idea of Becoming Engineers.
Having two children in the Middle School, I quickly volunteered to present for one of the classes. In particular, the sixth-grade class. Actually, it turned out to be three periods in the same classroom, but that was fine because all the material was basically the same.
(I didn't do any presentations in my children's classes because I wanted to avoid any potential embarrassment.)
The presentation starts out by asking the kids, "What is an engineer?", then goes through all the things that an engineer does, the careers that are available to an engineer, the education required to become an engineer, and ends by showing all the products that The Company produces. There are two activities in which the students participate: a Slinky experiment, and a bridge-building exercise.
At the very end, two aircraft "Black Boxes" are handed around so that everyone can have a hands-on experience with real product.
For all that, the most fascinating item in the presentation was the radio-control mouse I'd brought from home. This is a toy which can be purchased in just about any pet store, a little mouse-on-wheels used to drive cats insane (it works!). It has particularly clever packaging: the base of the display case is also the radio control panel.
The kids thought it was hilarious.
1 comment:
That sounds fun!
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