Kids were over the moon for SWE!
On Saturday, July 19, The Frontiers of Flight Museum hosted the MOON DAY celebration to commemorate the 45th anniversary of the first manned landing on the moon. The event featured over 25 exhibitors and plenty of fun, family-friendly activities. Dallas SWE and Fort Worth SWE partnered up to provide visitors with two hands-on, engineering-based activities.
Kids of all ages tried their hands at building a solar-powered robot, snapping together parts with a solar cell to demonstrate principles of Mechanical Engineering and Renewable Energy. The kids loved watching their robots roll along when under our makeshift sun (a study lamp!). One little boy said he thought engineering only involved buildings until he made the robots while a little girl was excited she could build a more stable robot faster than her brothers!
Kids got their hands wet by building boats from one piece of aluminum foil. The boat had to stay afloat while adding more and more weights. Each “boat-engineer” made a guess about how many weights their boat could hold… we had a record of 163! Several participants came back to design a better boat or go head to head with their siblings. We even had a contest between a father-son pair; the son walked away with bragging rights.
Over the course of the day’s celebration, over 150 kids visited the SWE exhibits with their families and participated in the activities with the volunteers from Dallas SWE (Zaineb Ahmad, Stephany Alanis, Sara Brandt, Teri Cate, Ashley Dunn, Barbara Read, Shelley Stracener, Tram Trinh, Jennifer Vilbig) and Fort Worth SWE (Carrie Ballester, Birdena Milligan, Candy Robinson). Several parents commented on the fun activities that made their children think outside the box and were interested in getting similar robots or giving the boats another try at home. Looks like the ladies of Dallas SWE and Fort Worth SWE met some future engineers!
The Dallas Morning News also featured our activities in their photo review of Moon Day.
~ Zaineb Ahmad, Dallas SWE Award Committee Chair