Fifth-graders at Monte Vista Elementary school raced mini, balloon-powered racecars Thursday designed with the help of UNM engineering students.
Ten UNM engineering seniors spent the past weeks teaching 50 fifth-graders engineering terms and concepts and helping them build the racecars as part of a volunteer program through the Society of Automotive Engineers.
UNM Student Ashley Brill, the program’s spokeswoman, said teaching the children was rewarding.
“It was really awesome for me to see that they’ve actually learned engineering concepts at 10 or 11 years old,” she said. “There are these words like ‘aerodynamic’ coming out of their mouths, and I know they learned that from us.”
Engineering student Tanya Rodriguez said she wants to inspire children to pursue engineering.
“It’s fun to interact with the kids and see them actually trying to understand what we do and get all these concepts and actually think of it as fun,” she said. “They get a chance to know what engineers do, and it’s great to see them in the beginning not knowing a thing about engineering, and now they understand it and explain it in detail.”
Brill said the fifth-graders learned to design their racecars to excel in certain areas, such as weight carrying and distance. The competitions were divided into categories to determine which racecars performed best in which areas.
Fifth-grader Ryan Bowles said he thought his car would win the competition. Bowles made his car’s wheels out of plastic lids and straw axles.
All of the children’s cars were made entirely of recyclable materials, fifth-grader Titus Anderson said.
“Our car is really awesome, and it was fun making it because we got to make it out stuff that wasn’t really expensive,” Anderson said. “It was all recyclable, so we’re helping the environment while still having fun.”
Anderson said he enjoyed working with UNM’s engineering students.
“Our UNM helpers made the cars work,” he said. “They’re awesome.”
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Fifth-grade teacher Anne Strader said the UNM Engineering Department has worked with her classes for four years, and she thinks it’s a valuable learning experience.
“It’s a creative process where they can learn about engineering and step-by-step data collection, but it’s really fun,” she said. “It’s a very high-interest way to capture their attention to teach them about these things.”
The children lined their cars up in the school gymnasium, blew up their car’s balloons and let the cars go. Some barely left the starting line while others traveled almost half way across the gym. Winners were awarded plastic gold medals and glow-sticks.
Anderson said he enjoyed racing cars with the engineering students.
“We get to meet new people and new friends and we get learn a lot of new physics and engineering,” he said. “And it’s really fun”
