Webb held its first Youth Engineering Day on December 7th. Student, faculty, and staff volunteers invited local elementary school kids to Webb to work on engineering challenges and chemistry experiments.

By 10:00 AM, 60 students and their families arrived for the event. Nolan Conway ’15 gave an excellent lecture about how the engineering process works, using the design of a super-hero as an example. After the lecture, the students formed groups for the paper-tower challenge. The groups were given ten pieces of paper, a strip of masking tape, and ten minutes to construct  the tallest tower in the room. The winning tower was over 50 inches tall! The students then broke out into three groups to rotate through the chemical engineering, naval architecture, and aerospace engineering activities.

At the chemical engineering session, conducted by Hannah Wistort ’17, students created their own reaction called “elephant toothpaste.”  Students assembled a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, dish soap, food coloring, yeast, and warm water. During this process, the hydrogen peroxide breaks down into oxygen and water. As the small amount of hydrogen peroxide generates a large volume of oxygen, the oxygen quickly pushes out of the container, creating bubbles, which quickly turns into expanding foam. The kids loved seeing their experiments erupt!

During the naval architecture session, lead by Nick Ratinaud ’17, students designed and built a tin foil boat to hold the heaviest cargo load possible. In the Robinson Model Basin, each boat was placed at the beach end of the tank facility. Weights were then added to each boat until the vessel sank. For many students this was their first time they were introduced to the  field of ship design.

The third session, directed by Barr Turner ’17, was aerospace engineering. Students designed paper airplanes with straws and paper. After the airplanes were constructed, each airplane was shot out by an air compressor at 60 psi to see which airplane could glide the farthest.

This event was a fun way to introduce young students to the field of engineering and to give them and their parents a chance to visit and learn about Webb. Special thanks to the Leadership Committee for organizing this successful event that will surely turn into an annual tradition.