Seventeen Sussex County high school students attending a summer Upward Bound Math & Science (UBMS) program worked on a project with the engineering technologies department at Delaware Technical & Community College, Owens Campus.
The students were introduced to the fields of engineering, mechanical design and manufacturing while attempting to create the most efficient spinning top.
The project was developed and conducted in the engineering technologies department by Dr. Doug Hicks, department chair; David Pedersen, instructional coordinator; Ron Sitze, lab technician; and Bill Benchoff, volunteer.
Math, science and related careers and programs are sometimes referred to as STEM which stands for science, technology, engineering and math.
“STEM careers are essential to our economy, worldwide competitiveness and standard of living but aren’t being chosen by many of the young people entering college programs around the country,” said Dr. Hicks.
“STEM fields are not easy,” said K. Ryan Brown, program manager at the UBMS Center. “We need to encourage and support students to put forth the extra effort to succeed in these fields. Mentoring by STEM professionals, like those in the engineering department, is vital to their success.”
The spinning top project was organized to provide UBMS students with some hands-on applications in STEM fields to help them make more informed career choices, Dr. Hicks explained.
“Students are learning a great deal while being introduced to fundamental engineering principles,” added Brown. “Spinning tops are a great application for students to learn about and appreciate physics.”
“Designing a spinning top has a lot to do with math and science,” said Jenny Velazquez, 16, of Georgetown. “It really helps to learn the subject in a different way; it makes it more fun.”
“We are also learning about the engineering program at Delaware Tech and how college students work,” Velazquez added.
Before designing their tops, students learned about the physics of spinning tops and characteristics such as weight, center of gravity and rotational inertia that influence a top’s balance.
They were then asked to sketch a design for an efficient top based on the physical principles that govern how a top works. Everyone was given the same size aluminum blank to make the top.
Once they had their individual sketches, the students worked in small teams to pick the best overall design ideas. They input the design into the computer-aided design (CAD)/computer-aided manufacturing (CAM) software which controls the computer numerical controlled (CNC) machine that fabricated the actual top from the piece of aluminum.
