Engineering and Science Camp

Kate just finished a week at an engineering and science camp at the university. This is an extremely popular camp that fills up quickly, not surprising in a high-tech town populated by geeky parents raising equally geeky kids. Kate's particular camp section had an architecture theme, and there was definitely a civil engineering bent to the projects. Here is a photo of Kate with her air-hockey table. It even has a fan tucked underneath.

The photo below shows the roller coaster she made with three other girls in her group. The goal was to get a marble to roll from one end to the other without having it fall off. Julia did this same project several years ago, and all the project groups demonstrated their coasters during the showcase for the parents, which Todd had attended. He made an interesting observation at the end. The boys all made very complicated coasters, with many loops and curves, but none of them worked correctly. The girls, on the other hand, had very simple models, but all of them worked. It's food for thought, but the sample size was probably too small to draw any statistically valid conclusions.