Having fun at the DuPage Area Engineers Week
More than 1,900 people attended the 29th Annual DuPage Area Engineers Week—”Engineering a Gateway to Tomorrow’s Technology”—in February at IIT’s Rice Campus in Wheaton.
The event was part of the 2013 National Engineers Week. DuPage area activities included a special IIT alumni family preview that was attended by 120 people and coordinated by IIT Alumni Relations. IIT’s Office of Undergraduate Admission was on hand to help recruit future students. Several students from Illinois Tech Robotics and mechanical engineering helped with the event, including student Dane Christianson, who was very popular with his Crossoid X-Cube.
Engineers Week is committed to making math, science and engineering fun and accessible to learners of all ages and provided children and adults with opportunities to experience a series of interactive displays and presentations that demonstrated the fundamentals of math and science. Volunteers from engineering societies, education, business and government donated their time to promote an active interest in learning, and showed the intriguing and applicable results of numerous engineering principles. The Engineers Week Expo included model airplanes and a wind tunnel exhibit, robots, bicycle power and hands-on activities with ZOOM, Design Squad, SCARCE and the DuPage Children’s Museum.
Activities included “Working Bikes,” which allowed attendees to see how much energy they can generate by pedaling a bicycle and a “Buildings to Shake-Rattle and Roll!” exhibit and presentation, which allowed participants to build and test their own building designs under simulated earthquake conditions. The popular cryogenics display included a few controlled explosions and items that were dropped into liquid nitrogen, which can freeze an object within seconds. Children also enjoyed watching their hair stand straight up thanks to the forces of static electricity, load-testing balsa wood bridges that can hold up to 400 pounds of force, and lifting their parents with levers and pulleys.
New this year, the Illinois Masons offered ILCHIP, a free child identification program that includes a digital video recording, fingerprints and a DNA sample of the children. Parents were able to take the ILCHIP records with them. Chicagoland Robotics had their Spring Competition and encouraged people to bring their own robots to demonstrate.
A great time was had by all! See photos from the event on the School of Applied Technology Facebook page.