Outreach Activities from First-Year Engineering Projects

In April 2012, the Mind Trekkers group from Michigan Technological University attended the 2 USA Science & Engineering Festival in Washington D.C. Mind Trekkers is an outreach organization that focuses on making STEM accessible to all age groups through action-packed hands-on learning. This learning often takes place in short demonstrations or activities. One of these activities was modified from a first-year engineering project on wind energy as part of the IDEAS Project (DUE-0836861). For the semester project, student teams developed a bench-scale wind turbine. They measured the turbine performance by measuring the RPMs, torque, and wind velocity. They used Excel to analyze their team and class data. The project was updated and modified for Mind Trekkers. In this adaptation, six turbine blades consisting of three different geometries (flag, rectangular, and leaf) were constructed. Participants selected the number and type of blades to insert into a KidWind hub. The KidWind hub was attached to a generator and pre-fabricated turbine stand. Students were able to adjust the blades they chose and blade pitch in order to maximize the voltage produced. This paper focuses on this adaptation of a first-year engineering project to K-12 outreach. It outlines the adaptation process from a semester-long project to a 3-5 minute learning experience. As the need for STEM outreach continues and grows, the need for new and unique activities also increases. The adaptation of existing work is one way to increase the number of activities available. Also, the adaptation of university-level projects to these outreach programs is significant because it begins to show participants what STEM students do and accomplish within the university environment.