FORT MYERS, Fla. — Middle school students from The Immokalee Foundation are getting hands-on experience with engineering principles through a water rocket project at Florida Gulf Coast University.
The program gives 45 middle school students the opportunity to design, build and test water rockets while learning from university professors.
"Really fun. It's actually a really cool project because at first you get to design it and next it gets to fly off," one of the participating students Kevin said.
The middle schoolers spent a week at FGCU learning engineering fundamentals including aerodynamics, physics and pressure needed to launch their rockets successfully.
"We get to learn from our mistakes that we do something that we can learn more from what we did," 13-year-old Joseph said.
Watch the water rockets take off in Immokalee Community Correspondent Ella Rhoades report:
Professor Lauren Redfern believes early hands-on experience makes a significant difference for young students, especially when they're having fun while learning.
"I think you never know what you might be interested in and so exposing kids to all types of engineering and a lot of different ways can help them find what they're good at and what they're passionate about," Redfern said.
The comprehensive project incorporates design, construction and flight testing to demonstrate various aspects of engineering careers.
"My main hope is that they take away that Engineering is for everyone so we need all sorts of people around the table thinking in different ways," Professor Ashley Danley said.
The students quickly grasped the importance of collaboration in engineering projects.
"It's important to have teamwork in order to make the rocket in order to work together to find the best possible way to make it go the highest and the fastest," middle school student Alondra said.
For these Immokalee students, the project is opening their eyes to potential career paths and future possibilities in STEM fields.
This story was reported on-air by a journalist and has been converted to this platform with the assistance of AI. Our editorial team verifies all reporting on all platforms for fairness and accuracy.
