Care Package Campaign
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Due to COVID-19 and physical restrictions in service, Engineering Off-Grid joined the Care Package Campaign. The Care Package Campaign aims to provide kids in underprivileged communities with activity boxes. Our club focused on providing 3 different kinds of STEM activity boxes for children of 3 different age groups (5-8 years old, 9-13 years old, and 14-16 years old).
For our first activity box (for the age group of 5-8 years old), we assembled and delivered “Making Slingshot Car” kits. This activity box not only allows the kids to have fun as a budding engineer, but also acts as an excellent introductory project to illustrate how potential energy is converted into kinetic energy, and the importance of low friction.
We provided popsicle sticks, wheels, wooden sticks, rubber bands, and masking tapes as the tools needed to build the makeshift car.
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Our second activity box (9-13 years old) is a “Making Slingshot Rockets” kit. It provides a more fun, learning challenge for the older age group, while being simple and inexpensive. Each of the kits contained popsicle sticks, rubber brands, tin foil, paper fastener and a large straw. Kids will be able to demonstrate basic engineering concepts of energy and motion. In this case, elastic energy and kinetic energy.
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A “Making Propeller-Powered Car” kit is our third activity box (14-16 years old), and a more complex step up of our first activity box project. Fast and fun, the propeller car is a hands-on lesson in air-powered thrust and inertia. Small, lightweight wheels have less inertia than big ones, which lets the car reach its maximum speed quickly.
By providing plastic propellers, wheels, straws, and thin sate sticks, kids can build their very own propeller cars.
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After sanitising all the materials, writing up instruction sheets, building prototypes and labelling our boxes, our club was able to successfully deliver activity boxes for 80 kids! We are happy to be able to contribute to service even during unideal conditions, and we strive to continue doing service through science wherever we may be.
