Last month our class walked down to the K'Nex workshop in Naas Library. When we arrived we headed upstairs. There was a man with about 8 buckets of K'Nex. We sat down at the tables. The man told us about his job as an engineer. He told us about Masdar City, an awesome-looking city in Abu Dhabi. This city is so futuristic because you travel around the city in these vehicles called POD cars. After he spoke he handed out two buckets of K'Nex to each table. We started building cars, aeroplanes, helicopters, houses-you name it really. I built the coolest car in history, wait for it....the McMobile! I built a huge seat, a steering wheel, a sturdy body and everything a K'Nex car should have. After a lot of building, of course, I had to dismantle it. It was great fun and if I had a choice I'd go again.
Written by Paddy McMahon, 5th Class.
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On Thursday the twelfth of February, an engineer came into St. Corban's to talk to the 6th classes about what it is like to be an engineer and what engineers do. He introduced himself as Michael Regan and went on to show us a picture of a house on the whiteboard. He asked us if there was any problems with the house. A lot of the lads agreed that the foundations didn’t look steady. Michael said that this was correct and showed us a representation of the house. A brick represented the house and there was a sponge underneath the brick to represent soft ground. Underneath the sponge was the teacher’s desk, which represented the hard ground. He showed us that when the heavy brick was placed on top of the soft sponge, the sponge sagged but the table didn’t react. This is what would happen if a house was built like the plans he had shown us. Then he went on to stick a couple of pencils into the sponge and placed the brick back on top. This time the sponge didn’t sag. This is because the pencils were transferring the weight of the brick to the desk. He explained to us that this is what the foundations of a building look like (in a simple form). That was only one of the projects in a very fun talk that I think all the boys enjoyed very much. Everyone was extremely engrossed in the talk and had a good time. I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that in 10 years some of the pupils have gone on to become engineers. Article by David C., St. Corban's Media Team.
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June 2019
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