Engineering challenges students
Pretty much everything you see around you an engineer has had a hand in helping design or build, said civil engineer Lindsay Mooradian Saturday morning.
Mooradian was at Niagara College with grades 10 and 11 students from Notre Dame College School, Denis Morris, Sir Winston Churchill and Saint Michael who were taking part in the fourth annual Design and Build Competition for Secondary School Students put on by the Niagara chapter of the Professional Engineers of Ontario.
“It’s to let students live a day in the life or use the skills that engineers use on an everyday basis, things like critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork and communication,” she said of the competition, held in the Rankin Technology Building at the Welland campus.
Mooradian said the goal was to give expose students to engineering and have them consider a possible career in the field in the future, especially with March being National Engineering Month.
With everything from civil, mechanical and electrical, to new areas like biomedical, materials and software, the engineering field, she said, is one that continues to grow.
“There’s still a lot of work to do to show kids the huge variety of jobs and choices in the field,” Mooradian said.
Notre Dame student Evan Kernaghan said his grandfather was a civil engineer with the City of Welland and he learned about engineering through him.
Kernaghan was on one of two teams that Notre Dame had in the competition Saturday.
“When I first learned this was an opportunity I definitely thought I’d take part in it,” he said of the competition.
As for becoming an engineer in the future, Kernaghan said he was thinking about it as a possible career option.
Mooradian said each school had two teams in the competition and had four hours in the morning to build a prototype and problem solve.
This year, students were building wind turbines that were later tested in a wind tunnel built by college staff.
“They also have to do a pre-
sentation to judges that are subject experts. The point of the presentation is to explain their design choices because there are many ways you can build a wind turbine,” she said, adding it was interesting to see what each school was working on.
Some of the teams came up with their own plans and built and tested the turbines before coming to the competition.
“Whether they stick with those plans or change them up and improve them is up to them,” Mooradian said.
Denis Morris physics teacher Kevin Ivanko said his two teams built wind turbines on Thursday and had a problem with the blades hitting the structure.
And with a snow day Friday, the St. Catharines students didn’t have a chance to test them out.
“Now they’re improvising and hopefully the turbines will work,” he said.
Ivanko said the school has won the competition the past two years and were hoping for a third victory.
Denis Morris first became involved, he said, when Mooradian contacted the school and asked if they wanted to be part of it.
“I thought it was a great opportunity for the kids to apply their knowledge of physics … and they’ve done great. They’re very, very eager to learn and to do the research needed,” he said.