The last event that IEEE participated in for the 2022 school year was a science night organized and hosted by a local Gainesville school, Kanapaha Middle School. Adrienne Thieke from Hands-On Gainesville originally informed me of the event and connected me with Katie Brooks, the Science Department Chair at Kanapaha Middle School. Now, for those of you unfamiliar with science nights, it's an opportunity for different STEM organizations to set up tables at a local school and provide hands-on activities to get students excited and interested in STEM. This one was originally scheduled for November 9th, but due to Hurricane Nicole, it was canceled and rescheduled to December 7th from 5 PM to 7 PM. While the rescheduling was unexpected, it gave IEEE some extra time to prepare more activities.
As an electrical engineering organization, we decided to bring some projects that would illustrate the broader strokes of the electrical engineering world. We brought a pair of 3D-printed handheld generator kits - courtesy of Hands-On Gainesville - to demonstrate basic power generation; shout out to Corbin for guiding students through the different electromagnetic principles. Some simple circuits were set up using SnapCircuits to illustrate how electricity flows through different circuits. Conrad, the IEEE Vice President, brought along his Arduino Star Wars music player - mentioned in a previous blog post - to show off basic coding and software/hardware interfacing. One of our members, Alex, brought along an FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array) to explain boolean logic and how it acts as the foundation for digital logic. Lastly, I brought along my junior design project, a fully assembled PCB for a programmable digital music box, to give an example of what you can make with the culmination of electrical engineering.
While it took a few minutes for our table to get our first round of students, we quickly reached a nice steady state where one group of students would arrive shortly after we finished interacting with another group. After the two hours came to an end, around 40 students and parents were able to visit our table and learn a little bit more about the electrical engineering world. My favorite moment was when I was walking a student through our circuit demonstration and seeing the student have a eureka moment when they were able to connect what I was saying to what was going on in the circuit. I also talked with the other members who participated and Alex stated that he enjoyed it "when the kids were excited and/or asking questions about our topics" and "when some students had knowledge on stuff we were talking about." All in all, I think it was an amazing opportunity, and I hope we can participate in more science nights in the future.
Comments