Photos by Kendall Patterson, CCI
This past week, students had fun learning during the Second Annual Nuts, Bolts and Thingamajigs Summer Camp sponsored by Quality Metal Stamping.
Last year, the camp was kept to kids 14 or older, but this year they expanded the age group to 12-year-old students as well.
“Last year, we tried to keep it more toward the age of 14 and incoming freshmen, and I had such a big calling last year that were right out of the age-groups so we dropped the age group a little bit to bring a little bit more in to get them more exposed to manufacturing and the skill trades and just being able to use their hands,” said James Carter of Chester County High School Automotive who is a Nuts, Bolts and Thingamajigs Summer Camp staff member and camp organizer.
This year students learned how to build a working wind turbine from scratch.
With a staff of educators including Carter, Teresa Crouse – CCHS Agriculture teacher, Neil Gaugh – CCHS Construction teacher and Tyson McCoy, the students were able to learn a variety of skills this summer such as reading a tape measure, soldering, windmill blade construction, aerodynamics and more.
“We all got together, and we all took a piece of the puzzle to teach the group each section and bring it together,” Carter said.
After learning all about the different aspects of wind turbines throughout the week, the students started constructing their wind turbines on Thursday. Then, they competed in a small competition at the conclusion of the camp on Friday to see whose wind turbine generated the most electricity by attaching the turbines to LED lights and seeing how many lights were lit.
The camp used a leaf blower to act as the wind source for the turbines to generate electricity. After going to a second round with the leaf blower being moved two more feet from the turbines, Levi Lavenue was declared the winner, having built the windmill that lit the most lights. Lavenue is going into the seventh grade.
Lavenue said he enjoyed learning to solder the lights and shared that his favorite part of the camp was making blades for his windmill.
For Carter, his favorite thing about the camp is the ability for the four educators to break down the learning components of the wind turbine to where they all were able to teach important skills.
“We had four instructors that were able to take the project and dissect it into four spots for each one of us to have something to be able to teach and show the students how to do it, and that was important because students got to see teaching from different aspects,” he explained. “Each one of us taught differently, but we were really good about being able to get our message across and get the skills taught.”
