Last Thursday, the University of the Algarve organized once more its annual open day, where it showcases their curricular offers to young students from all over the regional high schools. The Electrical Engineering Department asked us to be a part of the event and to prepare a small demonstration of our own projects to help motivate and inspire these young minds.
We started by presenting some of our most successful projects, like the Hackeyboard, winner of 3 instructables contests, and the 3D Printed DNA Lamp, also winner on another competition. David’s Nixie Clock was also present:
Also there were a few fun high voltage projects, like a Van de Graaff generator which kept kids interested while interacting with it, the 3D Printed Ion Thruster, demonstrating the working principle used on spacecrafts, and a last minute built Jacob’s Ladder:
In the world of Internet of Things we also had the opportunity to introduce the concept to many of the visitors, with a small demonstration using a SIGFOX network board, the Snootlab Akeru, an arduino compatible development board ready for IoT communications:
Last but not least, we also prepared a 3D printing exhibit with 3 printers: the amazing LulzBot TAZ4 we won on the LulzBot 4th Annual Hackerspace Giveaway, the agile delta Think3dPrint3d Kossel Mini, won on the instructables 3D printing contest, and a more humble but still reliable Prusa I3 we have built by using the other printers we won. With these awesome machines, we introduced the technology to these young students, for which many of them saw 3D printers for the very first time!
We’re happy to have been part of this event, giving ourselves to know a little bit better to the local community, showcasing our projects, sharing our knowledge and abilities and hopefully inspiring someone to pursue an engineering, technology or science career!
Here’s a gallery with some pictures from the event:
You can also check out the rest of the event at the official album.
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