Camp Connect
Camp Connect is a week-long day camp that introduces high school and middle school students to various engineering disciplines at the University of Central Florida. For Camp Connect we hosted “Shedding Light on Damage in Aircraft Structures”. We had 4 groups of 20 students, meaning we met up to 80 students in total. We started off by educating the students about spectrums and how we use light to test our materials and study their mechanical properties. Afterwards the students got into group of four and created their own spectroscopes. Spectroscopes are a tool used to split the wavelengths of lights into the colors that make them up also called spectrums. Once they created the spectroscopes we allowed the students to look at various light sources through the spectroscopes and record their observations. They got to look at fluorescent, incandescent, projector, computer, and their cellphone lights. Following the observations, they played a matching game where they compared different spectrums to the lights they observed and see how many they could match up. Two groups got all five spectrums correct. It was a great activity and the kids had a great time learning about light and understanding how it can be used to tell us about our materials.
Special Thanks to Taiason Cole, Khanh Vo, Sanjida Jahan, Ryan Hoover, and Eric Barker