Engineers for a day: North Andover fifth-graders give technology a trial run

By Bethany Bray
Staff Writer

Sat, May 17 2008

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Fifth-graders in North Andover learned about trains, planes and automobiles — and hot air balloons, rockets and hovercraft, too, then put their lessons to good use by building model cars.

Tom Wahle, an educator from Techsplorationahis N.H.-based science and engineering school enrichment program, visited every elementary school in town. After an assembly at which he demonstrated engineering principles and a little history of modes of transportation, he worked with classrooms on a car-designing project.

Students in Susan Baylies' fifth-grade class at Atkinson Elementary built cars from pink foam blocks attached to a wheel base. Wahle's test track propelled the cars with a blast of air from a vacuum cleaner on reverse mode.

Each group of students named its car — from "Mr. Pinky" to "the Science Locomotive" — developing and testing their designs. Some added paper sails to take advantage of the burst of air or streamlined the pink foam car body to slice to make the car more aerodynamic.

Baylies helped Wahle hand out supplies and cheered for the cars as they were tested. Her class had recently finished a unit on models and design, she said, and had designed rubber band-powered carts and self-propelled toy boats.

Baylies and Wahle said fifth-grade is just the right age to learn from and be able to handle engineering challenges.

"This is a microcosm of how technology really works," said Wahle as he watched students brainstorm ideas for their test cars. "In one hour, they can do 20 different tries (testing their cars on the track), and it keeps getting better and better, just like technology and how it works."

At first, most of the car designs didn't even make it to the end of the length of track. By the end of the hour, the cars were setting record times.

Urushi Madani and Julian Lathrop named their car "the Pink Cow." In its first test run, it zipped to the end of the test track in 2.93 seconds.

Classmates Dan Bonasoro, Tim Deveaux and Neil Shavan jumped up and down when their car, "the Science Busters," made a run .08 seconds behind the Pink Cow.

For the rest of the hour, the Pink Cow, the Science Busters and other teams tested and re-tested their designs, bringing the record-setting run to 1.66 seconds.

Madani and Lathrop's design — a large sail made out of Popsicle sticks and a piece of paper — started out as a few Popsicle sticks stuck in the block of foam and evolved from there, they said.

"There were gaps in between the Popsicle sticks, so we decided to make a sail," said Lathrop.

"We knew the wind would go on the paper (to propel it)," said Madani.

"Now we're trying to make it lighter," said Lathrop, as they used a file to cut away some of the pink foam. "We're thinking it might go a little faster that way."

The activities were sponsored by the North Andover Schools Enrichment Council.

Wahle, who started Mt. Vernon, N.H.-based Techsploration 10 years ago, said he has worked with fifth-graders in North Andover for seven years in a row. Before starting Techsploration, Wahle was a middle school technology shop teacher, he said.

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