The select few were eight-year-olds who spent an hour building cars out of Legos at the Princeton Public Library, under the mentorship of four undergraduate engineers. The undergraduates are members of Princeton Engineering Education for Kids (PEEK), which has used Legos to introduce local elementary school students to engineering since 2003.
Jane Yang ’11, who has volunteered with PEEK since her freshman year, said the goal of the program is “coupling the idea of reading and literacy with engineering” while encouraging young students to “think outside the box.”
Thursday’s event was the first of several weekly workshops aimed at children ages eight and older which will take place at the library from Feb. 4 to March 4.
“What we’re going to do today is we’re going to put you into the shoes of engineers,” Yang told the children at the start of the session. She went on to explain that they would explore the five stages of engineering — “Plan it, build it, test it, improve it and sell it” — by building cars with optional gears and motors out of Legos.
Mechanical and aerospace engineering professor Clarence Rowley, PEEK’s faculty adviser, said the organization’s major goal was “to get kids interested in engineering at a young age, especially before stereotypes set in.” Engineering professions typically attract more men than women.
Since its inception, PEEK has sent undergraduate volunteers to third-grade classrooms at four local elementary schools. Yang, a chemical engineering major, said that PEEK targets entire elementary classes rather than focusing on students interested in engineering in order “to close the minority achievement gap.” Seeing young girls think about engineering, she said, is one of the highlights.
When PEEK volunteers visit classrooms, they lead students in engineering challenges of increasing complexity over a period of five weeks.
“Each process builds upon the next,” Yang explained. In an early lesson, students attempt to construct a word out of Legos that will not break apart when dropped. In a later lesson, they study gear ratios and build Lego cars.
The series of workshops at the library will feature only the lesson on constructing cars and teach a different group of students each week.
Yang said the workshop was an opportunity for her to remember a time before the days of problem sets and projects that require dozens of hours to complete.
“In real life,” she said, “engineers certainly aren’t going to be able to build a car in one hour.”
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