Quick — take two sheets of newspaper and build as tall a tower as possible. But you can't use anything to hold it together — your only tool is your ingenuity.
That's the challenge sixth-graders at Brookfield Elementary received Tuesday, Nov. 12, and the students proved worthy of it. It wasn't easy, and some of their efforts fell down, but they tried hard and solved the problem.
"Some were a little slow starting, but others jumped right in — and all of them did different things," said parent and engineer Dawne LeKang, who brought the event to Brookfield. "And at the end, there was a tower at every station."
She has two children there, is a project manager at Northrup Grumman and a member of the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). Northrup Grumman sponsored "Discover E Works" (E for "engineering"); SWE provided the materials.
Teachers chose the particular experiments the students would do. Third-graders on Tuesday investigated which things float or sink. In December, fourth- and fifth-graders will experiment, too.
"The idea is to bring engineering into the schools and give the children hands-on activities to do," explained LeKang. One of SWE's objectives is also to expose young girls to engineering, and LeKang and two other women engineers did Tuesday's presentations so the girls could see female role models in this field.
"Girls may like math and science but, in elementary school, they don't always realize what engineering is — or that they could go into it as a career," said LeKang. She's an electrical engineer, and the others participating Tuesday were Stacy King, a (computer) network engineer for Northrup Grumman, and Andrea Stenberg, an IBM mechanical engineer.
First, students saw a video about how a bicycle's engineering affects its performance. And real engineers told what they can do because of their engineering degrees. Then the children tried their hands at it. They broke into groups of three and had 15 minutes to build their paper towers.
Three girls joining forces were Rocio Corado, 11, America Monge, 11 and Maria Reyes, 12. Rocio slightly rolled the newspaper and stood it on its side. Then she placed a small, torn sheet of paper across the top. But, alas, it collapsed.
"It was really beautiful, but someone came running by and blew it over," said America. Added Maria: "The problem was getting it to another level on top because it's thin and not solid enough to stand up."
Evita Afan, 12, Tamana Nowrozzada, 11 and Star Shojae, 12 also teamed up. They began like the other girls did, but added another rolled piece of paper atop the horizontal piece. Star said it was tough to build without tape or other supplies, and paper, alone, just "doesn't stand."
Composing a team of three boys were Jassir Gaffar, Kevin Hoang and Chirill Cneazev, all 11. They made three towers, each surrounded at the bottom by cuff-like rings for support. "I started making these rolly things [the towers] and then the rings," said Kevin.
"We put on a flat piece of paper at the top so it would have a surface, and then we put on more rings," said Chirill. "Kevin thought up the towers, I thought up the rings and Jassir helped build them." Kevin and Chirill learned that the top must be light and the bottom, strong. Jassir learned that "if you folded the flat piece in half, it made it thick enough to hold the rings above it."
Afterward, LeKang said the children were introduced to engineering "in a fun, hands-on activity that'll last a lot longer than anything we could say to them." Added King: "Engineering is a great field. This exposes them to its rewarding and fun side and gets them to realize that almost everything around us is touched by engineers."