Motorists sick of high gas prices, take note: Utah teenagers are creating new ways to get around — some, with scrap metal off an F-16.
Students from Beaver, Milford and San Juan high schools, Farmington Junior High and a Farmington community built electric cars from the ground up. The rubber met the road — make that a race track — at a premiere state engineering challenge last spring.
But it's not the need for speed — and it's good thing, as Milford High's championship vehicle averaged 21.8 mph — that's driving the State Office of Education's engineering challenge. Rather, it's part of a national movement to taxi kids through engineering courses so they're more inclined to pick the high-demand career.
"It's helped me open my eyes on what the future is going to be like on renewable energy and electric cars," said Coltan Bradshaw, one of the young engineers from Milford, Beaver County, who someday wants to design a better windmill. The State Office of Education is pitching the engineering challenge to teachers across the state, and hopes to as much as triple the number of schools creating electric cars beginning this fall.
But if gearing students up for the future and hands-on learning isn't a good enough sell for the spendy project — Milford's cost about $4,000 — maybe the fun factor will be.
Utah students have dabbled in transportation creation for years. Granger High students have been building an airplane. Bonneville High graduate Brent Singleton last year earned two U.S. Environmental Protection Agency awards for creating environmentally friendly vehicles, including two electric junior dragsters.
The State Office of Education wants to push that kind of hands-on work to lure kids into engineering. Its pre-engineering pathways program funnels children into technology, engineering and design courses beginning in eighth grade, complemented by math leading up to pre-calculus and biology, physics and chemistry.
A national program, "Project Lead the Way," for which Weber State University is the Utah affiliate, offers more diverse options, including civil and aerospace engineering and computer-integrated manufacturing, plus the chance for college credits. It is available in 15 Utah schools: five Davis and two Ogden district schools, three charter schools, Jordan and Granite technology centers and schools in Logan, Uintah and Weber districts.
"We talk about improving math scores, and we talk about improving science scores, but if we don't make this education relevant to them, there's no way," said Melvin Robinson, technology and engineering education specialist for the State Office of Education.
For the engineering challenge, schools were invited to create electric cars. Milford and Beaver bought a kit for the body, and designed the vehicle's viscera on their own. San Juan and Farmington cars were all original, with Farmington using scrap from an F-16, Robinson said.
The five raced at Salt Lake Community College in early May. The goal was to go the farthest in an hour.
Winning Milford's technique: keep the pedal off the medal. Though its car clocked nearly 33 mph before the race, the car averaged 21.8 mph to avoid mechanical difficulties and pit stops.
That proved fortunate. Chain problems forced the Farmington Junior High car to the pits eight times, Robinson said. San Juan's car required two long pit stops because it threw a chain and at one point lost a steering wheel.
Kids helped each other, despite the thrill of competition, Swapp said.
"The sportsmanship at this race was just phenomenal," with teams sharing tools and gadgets in the pits, Swapp said. "Not that anyone won or lost. The cars ran, we helped each other out. It was just real, real crowning moment of glory for a teacher to see his kids be really, really good sports."
Robinson marketed the program to technology and engineering teachers earlier this summer, hoping to have 15 schools take up the engineering challenge this school year.
Robinson also hopes the competition can go beyond electric cars to robotics or hydroelectricity or other hands-on applications to get students excited about engineering.
But even if life leads participants to other careers, they will have benefited, Swapp said.
"A lot of these kids may never use this again. But they've done the research, been through a learning curve, and if they want to attempt something, they know they can," Swapp said. "I think that means a world in education."
E-mail: jtcook@desnews.com