Contest uses mousetrap cars to power STEM goals
Christine Pharris’ students made the calculations carefully.
The Roberson Middle School seventh-graders knew they wanted their car, fashioned from a mouse trap and two CDs, to travel 25 meters — the length of a middle school gym. They knew the circumference of the CDs that functioned as the car’s wheels, and they knew how many turns of the axle they’d need to get it that distance.
With the school’s 3D printers, the kids created two gears for their mouse trap car, creating a 6-to-1 gear ratio that would help maximize the tiny vehicle’s abilities.
On Saturday, during a competition with students from at least 10 other schools, Pablo Del Castillo snapped the trap and watched the car go. It spun quickly and streaked toward the opposite side of the gym, and as it passed half-court the crowd began to cheer.
It traveled 23 meters before it came to a stop, the farthest of the competition at that point. Del Castillo and his classmates, Adam Tucios and Charlese Aventuna, celebrated with highfives and cheers.
“We got a really good car here,” Del Castillo said after the team’s first try, a 21-meter run.
Saturday’s competition was sponsored Houston ISD’s Southeastern Consortium for Minori
ties in Engineering, or SECME, program and Exxon Mobil. It’s meant to inspire students from underrepresented communities to spark an interest and then pursue degrees in science, technology, engineering and math.
Less than 20 percent of the nation’s engineering corps are minorities, a disparity this program and its contests are trying to improve, said Truman Bell, who manages education and diversity programs for Exxon. SECME has been around 45 years, he said.
The program, originally founded by deans at Historically Black Colleges and Universities in the southeast, provides resources to schools and equips teachers to prepare their students in extracurricular programs.
“It’s a great outreach program to get kids interested in engineering,” Bell said. “We need them to reach parity so we have the engineers for the future that we need.”
And the program is working, he said, even if the disparity still exists. A stark divide like that takes time to address, Bell said, and they need to reach kids early in middle school.
One such example is Astra Zeno, a teacher at Young Women’s College Preparatory Academy and the district coordinator for SECME. Zeno participated in the program herself when she was growing up in Houston and attending school.
She went on to get two engineering degrees, and now she’s helping pass those passions onto the next generation. On Saturday, she was carrying a megaphone and coordinating the contests.
The objective is travel the farthest without losing a ping pong ball, which each car was required to carry.
It’s a trick to try to get the cars to travel straight, according to
Bell. Many fell short of their engineers’ expectations, sputtering soon after starting or turning sideways and streaking out.
The students were determined to learn, though. After one team’s car fell short of expectations, they gathered in the bleachers and started brainstorming ways to improve for next year.
Del Castillo and his classmates were hoping their 23-meter run would be enough to win firstplace and send them to semi-nationals at the University of Alabama.
They qualified last year and earned a trip to the University of Florida.
“We got a lot of experience and tried to incorporate it this year,” said Del Castillo. At nationals last year, he said he started learning to incorporate the gear systems that propelled this year’s entry.
And as for the future?
Del Castillo confirmed he wants to be an engineer but said he hasn’t yet figured out what kind. Tucios has his eyes on marine biology, and Aventuna wants to going into biomedicine.
“It’s a great outreach program to get kids interested in engineering. We need them to reach parity so we have the engineers for the future that we need.”
Truman Bell, who manages education and diversity programs for Exxon