ENGINEERING FACULTY INVOLVEMENT IN K-12 EDUCATION AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE

The human mind is of its very nature inquisitive.It is a mystery of sorts why so relatively few individuals pursue science and engineering careers, especially since they are well paying and very satisfying.This paper presents a history of the involvement of engineering faculty for more than 35 years in teaching students from kindergarten through Junior High School about the excitement and challenge of engineering and technology careers.Examples of experiences with 1 st through 12 th grade students using hands-on experiments and simple topics, such as center of gravity, mass center and "limits," are illustrated.The paper presents a concept initiated by the authors, called "An Experiment in a Box," which presents a number of simple and interesting experiments that can be accomplished in one class period or less, fit in a 10 ream paper box, and can be tailored for various age groups.In addition, the paper describes a series of hands-on experiments, suited to senior high school and freshmen college students, to introduce students to science, engineering and technical skills without any in-depth prerequisite math or science knowledge. Early Elementary Grades (EEG)Our experience with EEG was challenging and exciting.Initial thoughts were how we would keep five to six years olds interested for thirty or forty minutes continuously.Our surprise was that after over an hour we were tired and the youngsters were clamoring for more.At this very early level we introduced youngsters to concepts such as center of mass and limits in mathematics.To introduce them to center of mass, the students were shown that the center of mass of a symmetrical geometric figure would lie on an axis of symmetry, and that, if two intersecting axes could be identified, their intersection would be the center of mass.To demonstrate this concept experimentally after it was shown geometrically, the youngsters cut out symmetrical geometric shapes and hung them with a plumb-line from two points on different lines of symmetry confirming that their intersection was the center of mass as shown in Figure-1.Through simple qualitative discussion and demonstration the students were introduced to the fact that for every object, regardless of its shape and size, when freely suspended from any point on the shape, a plumb line will always pass through the center of mass.Using two points not on the same line of "mass symmetry" will result in an intersection which is the mass center of the object as illustrated in