College of New Caledonia (CNC) students may have looked a little younger than usual today (Feb. 27) as the post-secondary school was hosting nearly 350 grade six and seven students putting their engineering skills to the test.
Thirteen elementary schools across Prince George competed in the fifth annual Regional Skills Competition in three events: spaghetti bridge building, wind turbine construction and gravity car racing.
“Junior skills is a really great way to get kids interested in science and technology and keep them interspersed in science and technology,” says Chad Thompson, CNC’s Vice President Academic.
He says the students are working with engineering faculty to answer questions like, how do you build the best spaghetti bridge, and learning physics concepts during the gravity car racing, and even seeing who can generate the most effective electrical output from their wind turbine design.
“We are celebrating our 50th year as a college and to me, with kids of this age, we are getting ready for the next 50 years. These kids are the future college students and future university students – these kids are the future of north-central B.C.”
Julia Mills, a grade six/seven teacher from Westwood Elementary, says her class has been working on their project since just after Christmas.
“We first started making them out of cardstock paper and pencils to test out different shapes and then we narrowed down the top three shapes to make them out of cardboard and finally we progressed to building them out of the wood at school.”
She says the regional skills competition is a good opportunity for the students to engage in hands-on learning.
“I think it’s a great way for them to interact with other students and to be able to learn from other people as well,” says Mills.
“It also allows them the opportunity to get out of the classroom and do something with their hands and do something different than what they might do in the classroom every day.”
