Taylor Shipp, who is entering 9th grade, adjusts his team’s gravity car before the students see how far it can go in this August file photo
Students demonstrate their gavity cars on Tuesday afternoon in Chehalis to see how far the cars can travel.
This week, W.F. West High School hosted a summer STEM camp for not only its own students, but students in the surrounding area.
This week’s session was an introduction to engineering, where the students built a “gravity car” at W.F. West and later toured University of Washington.
“We made a gravity car that pretty much uses weight and gravity to move it forward,” said Taylor Shipp, who is entering the ninth grade. “We have our weight at the front and then we tied it around the axle of our car. The weight goes down, which is moving the wheels to make it go forward.”
The students worked on the cars over a two-day period and presented the final products on Tuesday afternoon.
The gravity car kits came with metal clips. The students’ challenge was to eliminate all metal and design 3D-printed parts for the car.
“We made a few changes, like height, because we’re using our potential energy, which gravity is part of and also height,” Shipp said. “The higher it is, the more gravity can do and it will go further. We also added a lot of length, so it will also go forward faster.”
Students designed clips and axles for the car and used a 3D printer to make them.
Sen. John Braun, R-Centralia, Rep. Richard DeBolt, R-Chehalis, Frank and Julie Jungers and Dean of Engineering at University of Washington Michael B. Bragg came to watch the students present their gravity cars.
“It’s just an exciting program to have here at our local high school — to involve the top research university in the state and the bright folks that can help our students understand the opportunities they have,” Braun said.
When asked if he thought that he could build a gravity car, Braun joked, “I’m not going to comment on that.”
Brian Fabien, who is the associate dean for academic affairs in the College of Engineering, spent Monday and Tuesday working with the students on their cars. He then hosted them at University of Washington on Wednesday.
“Yesterday we came and showed them what the gravity cruisers look like and challenged them to make it better,” Fabien said. “Most of them did. So what we did yesterday afternoon was teach them how to do computer design. So they learned that and they designed a lot of the pieces that you see on the car. All those colored pieces, they designed and 3D-printed overnight.”
Fabien said there are three fundamental pieces he hoped students took away from the camp — how to work in a team, fundamental engineering skills and communication.
“Those are the three things engineers do throughout their careers,” Fabien said. “So we gave them a taste of that today and yesterday.”
The students came from the Chehalis School District, and schools in the surrounding area as well. Lynn Panther, a teacher on special assignment working on Summer STEM coordinating, said there were students from Morton, Napavine, Adna, Olympia and Pe Ell.
“We had a good number of kids outside of our school district that came,” Panther said. “It was nice — we appreciated that. We wanted to be able to have it open to all kids, not just kids in the Chehalis School District.”
Fabien said it is important to University of Washington that these students have opportunities to eventually find themselves in classes at the university.
“This is actually one of the things that’s very important to us at the University of Washington,” Fabien said. “We aim to serve all of the students of the state. So our outreach opportunities like this, to communities that are far away from UW, is something we value. I want these kids to show up in our classrooms.”
