Doctor, teacher, an actor, or an engineer! During high school, each child is ambitious and starts stepping towards their professional aim. Be it internships, activity sessions, or even SUPWs, these kids choose everything as per what they wish to be when they grow up. This planning of the future has a lot to do with what these teens love doing the most. So if your high schooler is all about experimenting, fixing things and would love to grow up to be an engineer one day, you know that it is the time to introduce some fun engineering activities to the child.
These activities can give them a huge insight as to what their careers can look like. And, at the same time, it would also keep them engaged and still teach them tons about this field. Therefore, in this post, we have enlisted some activities that high schoolers can definitely give a try!
Level Up Your Engineering skills: Employ these 8 Fun Activities
Are your regular studies getting monotonous, and you are not feeling the enthusiasm or excitement? If that’s the case, you must turn to this post. Today we will talk about some activities from which you will learn, explore, experiment, or build something new every moment. For this, you do not need any lab or any big and heavy equipment. All you need is some material and time.
Here are some fun engineering activities that you must try:
1. Rainbow Fire
Materials required for the experiment: Burner, wire holder, thin wires of elements, gloves, and sunglasses.
Have you ever seen different colored fires? — green, blue, yellow, etc.? If not, today, we will enlighten you about distinct ways by which you can light different colors of fire. Multicolored fire is a relatively popular engineering activity. If you have never seen it, then you must try it. In this, you have to heat thin wires of respective metals on a high flame; consequently, students have to tell the name of the metal by the color of the flame.
Different metals exhibit different colors of flames. Given below are the flame test results of some metals, which you can remember, and guess the elements right by looking at the flame.
Element | Colour |
Lithium | Red |
Sodium | strong, persistent orange |
Potassium | lilac (pink) |
Rubidium | red (red-violet) |
Strontium | Red |
Barium | Pale green |
2. Turn The Lights On Low
Materials required for this experiment: copper wire, plastic food storage tub, aluminum foil, 9V marked battery, electrical tape, water, and salt.
To carry out this experiment, you will find most of the commodities in your home. In this experiment, you will discover how sodium ions transmit electricity. Attach a wire to each diode on the batter and join the screws on each end of the tub. Join one diode to one screw. Tape the other two wires with electrical tape to the Popsicle rolled in foil. By doing this, the circuit of these foil electrodes will be closed. Turn on the circuit.
Fill the food tub with water. Add some salt to it. After the mixture is complete, the bulb turns on! This experiment demonstrates how a bulb connected to a closed-circuit can light up with just the help of sodium ions present in water.
3. Launch Your Box
Material required for this experiment: 3D print bottle, air pump, plastic soda bottle
Attach the air pump to the 3D print bottle mount to conduct this experiment. Bind a plastic soda bottle to the base. Pump the air deliberately. You’ll notice launching off bottle rockets.
In this wonderful small experiment, you will get the privilege of understanding the various concepts of aerodynamics.
4. Clean-clean Water
Materials required: A bucket, sand, rocks, and net.
There are places around the world that are not well-developed; without an adequate supply of clean drinking water. However, students should know to be able to formulate clean drinking water. This can be done by taking care of the normal river or tap water.
During childhood, we have been taught about several means to purify water. However, hardly anyone would have applied the methods taught. To carry out this experiment, make a hole in the bottom of the bucket. Keep the bucket at a little height from the ground to effectively collect the water with ease. Place two to three layers of the net and lay it well inside the bucket. Fill the sand up to half a bucket. In the end, keep small stones from above on top of the sand. Now fill the bucket with impure water.
Slowly you will see clean water falling from below. This is the natural way to purify water.
5. Soda Mentos Rocket
For this activity, apart from soda and mentos toffee, you will need a 2-liter bottle, a PVC pipe, adaptor, ball-shaped valve, and super glue for this experiment. As for the tools, you just need a saw cutter and A4 sandpaper.
With the help of all this, students will be able to make several chamber rocket setups. This is a very fun activity and provides a very easy way to learn about rocket propulsion. In this, students get to learn that when acidic and basic elements react with each other, carbon dioxide is released. Thus, we discover what happens when the carbon dioxide gas builds up.
This activity makes you comprehend the concept outside the course with the help of some small tools.
6. Light Following Robot
Light following robot technique is an experiment with the help of which you can make a robot that moves towards the light. This is the best technique to connect the light concept of physics.
To make this robot, you have to make an arrangement of photoresistor cells and inspect which side has an impressive brightness. For this, you will need a good hold on electronics and some knowledge of programming as well.
This is a great project to work on. With its aid, you can develop a different perspective of looking at engineering altogether.
7. Brown-field
Brownfield land is an already developed land (for industrial and commercial purposes), which is no longer in use. When the government or company purchases these lands to launch a new production activity, it is referred to as brownfield activity. A high school student can acquire and learn insight into the environment and economy by participating in these activities.
In these activities, students are shown pictures of brownfield sites, encompassing power plants, industrial sites, gas stations, etc., or they are asked to dig up the information themselves. Next up, they are asked to physically visit the site to take GPS readings and conduct a thorough investigation. Then they are to deliver an article elucidating the site (while incorporating both the positive and negative aspects of it).
This can be rendered useful as it would help high school students learn the significance of formulating a cleaner, healthier space. The real importance, however, is to spread awareness.
8. SAFE-Net
Safety net or safe-net is an information security company established in the United States. Safe-net activities are cyber activities wherein high school students are asked to carry out methods of Security and ethics. During remote learning, youngsters spend more time at home – on mobile phones and other gadgets. Participating in these activities will help students brush up their skills and help stave off issues, such as cyber-attack, bullying, and so on. Safe-net activities can positively influence the child’s growth, education, health, and food security. Besides, it reduces poverty substantially and promotes households’ ability to formulate income, boosting the economy.
Gains To Look Out For From These Activities
When you make something new, you get addicted to making something new all the time. Likewise, when you learn something new, then the desire to learn increases. One just learns from engineering activities and gets a passion for doing something new. There are a lot of benefits from doing engineering activities. Below is a list of significant benefits one can get from engineering activities.
- Helps Break Out Of A Regular Daily Routine
It is mostly the children who are in high schools that find their lifestyle boring as they are practically following the same routine for days and days. Therefore, when there are some fun-loving engineering activities during school, students will also get a small recreational break. As a result, students will be more engaged in their studies, and they will not be bored or feel dull either.
- Helps Learn Something Out Of The Box—Enable imagination and Ingenuity
When students do something different outside their course, they learn something new. When engineering activities take place in school, children get to know about a different concept other than their course books. This improves brain functioning and allows students to think divergently. Without ingenuity, there can be no development in the technology of this modern world. Such activities allow the student to think differently and creatively.
- Helps Build Resilience
During engineering activities, Children live in safe environments. Thus, it allows them to commit a mistake without any fear. Moreover, they tend to learn from them. They even try never to repeat the same mistakes. While practicing these activities, students release that failure is a sign of learning. Thus, engineering activities allow students to build resilience, which teaches them how to tackle failures.
- Helps Teach About Macromolecular Products
Engineering activities introduce the concepts of polymers: each of the properties of the polymer, all its uses, and the process in which polymers are formulated to create different products. Thus, the students are made aware of the importance of carbon.
Conclusion
We recommend that every high or middle school should adopt engineering activities in their daily study schedule. Schools and universities should also promote fun and engaging activities to help retain the interest of students and boost productivity. These activities help in the broadening of the mind of children and strengthen their visualization and creativity skills. With this, not only will children learn something new, but they will also be more innovative. This can help them a lot in their future life – and they can go ahead and do something that they probably would not have imagined.
Sananda Bhattacharya, Chief Editor of TheHighSchooler, is dedicated to enhancing operations and growth. With degrees in Literature and Asian Studies from Presidency University, Kolkata, she leverages her educational and innovative background to shape TheHighSchooler into a pivotal resource hub. Providing valuable insights, practical activities, and guidance on school life, graduation, scholarships, and more, Sananda’s leadership enriches the journey of high school students.
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