2/27/2015 Lyanne Alfaro
Written by Lyanne Alfaro
With help from MechSE, a new air maze exhibit built by Uni High School students made a debut at the Children’s Orpheum Museum in late January.
The project, which students finished building late last fall, will be a permanent exhibit at the museum in Champaign. The maze enables young users to experiment with the concept of cause and effect as they send different kinds of objects attached to a foam ball through the air maze. After users release an object into the maze, they can choose to change the object’s course using a lever. Meanwhile, older students can use the exhibit as a basis to begin discussing fluids and flows.
Supplies for the air maze came from an unfinished project, donations from Uni High parents, and MechSE’s machine shop. MechSE assistant professor Leonardo Chamorro also offered feedback on the students’ plans and helped design the tails to attach to the foam balls.
“Why not have the high school engineering students do something meaningful, something they will be proud of and to put on college resumes?” Joe Muskin, education coordinator at MechSE, said.
Consequently, Muskin and Uni High teacher Sharlene Denos decided to implement an air maze construction project into her engineering class.
“(The air maze) was something that high school kids could design and build in a semester,” Muskin, a former secondary school teacher, said. “There was a reasonable chance they could get it to work and succeed.”
In the classroom, students split into four teams—lights, input box, maze structure, and maze objects—to help the maze design become a reality. However, Muskin reported that students’ work on the maze went beyond class time as well.
“MechSE’s machine shop did some construction; the kids did all the rest,” Muskin said. “They were at the museum many weekends putting together this air maze.”
Uni students also managed to make additions that differentiated their project from existing air mazes. For instance, students incorporated LED lights triggered by a sensor to track movement in the maze after users pull the lever to change the object’s path.
“They got the Arduino, they programmed it and they got the LEDs,” Muskin said. “(The students) did something that I am not aware that any other air maze in the country has, which is a light system.”
Some project participants also say they experienced a different side to engineering via the air maze construction.
“I was on the team that did design optics for it,” Nafisa Syed, a student in the engineering class, said. “A lot of people make engineering out to be as
something kind of dry but it was a lot more creative.”
Students are now writing signs for the exhibit that will highlight teaching points of the air maze.
“I think it was really cool for students to see that real engineering is kind of an iterative process,” Muskin said. “That was exciting, for the students to realize that engineering is actually kind of a human endeavor. I think it got some of the students excited about engineering more than they had been.”
Upon installation, Martin Luther King, Jr. School’s second and third grade students enjoyed the air maze on its opening day. Here, the visitors painted and put their handprints on the blower box—an activity meant to mimic the Uni tradition which embellishes school halls when seniors graduate every year.