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Passport to the Materials World: Materials Engineering Outreach Activities

Katherine C. Chen, Lisa Christensen, and Amanda Runciman Materials Engineering Department, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, CA 93407

Abstract The students and faculty of the Cal Poly State University Materials Engineering (MatE) department have put together an exciting and portable outreach program that includes an interactive presentation, demonstrations, and hands-on activities. Several of the different outreach activities will be discussed, with special emphasis on the imaginative visit to MatEland, which is accompanied with a passport for stamps at each materials demonstration station. Participants begin to view the world through the material engineer’s eyes and realize the impact of materials on everyday products. In addition, new and fascinating materials, such as amorphous metal, ceramic superconductors, shape memory alloys, and instant polymeric snow are highlighted. While pedagogical techniques used in the college classroom have been applied to our outreach program, many parts of the outreach presentation have worked well at the college level also. The efforts have resulted in young children becoming excited about materials, as well as providing creative and educational opportunities for our college students. Presentation skills, knowledge of the field, and connections to the community are enhanced for the materials engineering students.

Activities In efforts to inform young children and the general public about the field of Materials Science and Engineering, the Materials Engineering (MatE) department at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo has been visiting local area schools and offering workshops on campus. Our program is driven by our current students and is continually evolving. We have created a set of presentation topics, demonstrations, and activities that can be easily modified for different audiences and venues.

One of our most successful events is part of the Cal Poly Society of Women’s Engineers (SWE) Building an Engineer Workshop for 7th and 8th grade students. We create an imaginary place onn campus called “MatEland,” complete with several different attractions to visit during the participants’ journey. A passport is issued to every participant, and each page highlights a different attraction or activity in our labs (Figure 1). Each attraction has a creative name such as “Metropoglass” or “Planet of the Shapes.” When each person visits an attraction, they received a stamp in their passport (Figure 2). Many of the attractions are popular demonstrations used by many others1-3, but here, they are just reformatted into a fun package. We have the Mayor of MatEland (a current Materials Engineering student) give a welcome speech and an introduction to the activities. A visitor book is available for them to sign and to let us know what they think of their travels to MatEland.

Proceedings of the 2005 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2005, American Society for Engineering Education

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Runciman, A., & Christensen, L., & Chen, K. (2005, June), Passport To The Materials World: Materials Engineering Outreach Activities Paper presented at 2005 Annual Conference, Portland, Oregon. 10.18260/1-2--14339