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Community Day: Saturday, Feb. 22

Innovative Technologies Complex, ������Ƶ (in-person)

Sponsored by Watson College Dean's Office and Watson Career and Alumni Connections 

In celebration of National Engineers Week from Feb. 16-22, Watson College will host our annual Community Day event for children and their families. These fun, hands-on STEM activities are free and open to all ages!  

• Morning session: 9:30 a.m.-12 p.m.
• Afternoon session: 1-3:30 p.m.

Each session is limited to 200 children on a first-come, first-served basis. 

• Morning Session

  Amateur Radio 

  Watson Amateur Radio Club
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: ES hallway between rooms 2303 and 2100

  Amateur radio — also known as ham radio — communicates across the street, around the world or even with people and satellites in space! Even when the power's out and the landlines and cell phones don't work, ham radio is there with a battery, a radio and a wire. Ham radio lets us make lifelong friends and offers a hands-on technical education. It provides the resources and encouragement to experiment and to design and build with the latest communications technologies.

  Arduino Project Demonstrations

  Engineering Design Division (EDD) - First-Year Engineering Program
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: Center of Excellence Link

  Investigate interactive projects built by our student teams using Arduino, an open-source prototyping platform. Projects include Bop-it, Horse Race, Maze Runner, Reaction Time Tester, Simon Says, Text Adventure and Whack-a-Mole.

  

  Blast Off! DIY Bottle Rocket Adventure

  American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
  Location: Rotunda (approaching Center of Excellence link)

  Get ready to launch into fun! Build your very own bottle rocket using colorful construction paper, big plastic bottles and a splash of creativity. Then watch it soar as we pump it full of pressurized air and launch it high into the sky. Will your rocket be the one to reach the stars? Join us for this exciting hands-on activity and let your imagination take flight!

  Bouncy Ball Bonanza

  Alpha Omega Epsilon (AOE)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
  Location: Rotunda (approaching Center of Excellence link)

  Come make your own bouncy ball! Choose some of your favorite color glitter, add glue and borax, and watch the magic happen right in front of your eyes. Take home your unique bouncy balls and see which bounces the highest!

  Candy Float Challenge

  Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering (IISE)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
  Location: Center of Excellence Hallway

  Design and construct a tinfoil boat capable of carrying a candy load across the water. Experiment with different designs and discover how small adjustments can make a big impact on performance. How much candy can your boat hold? Afterward, take your boat and candy home to enjoy your engineering success!

  Create Your Own Game

  Binghamton Tech Collective (BTC)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: ES 2001

  Build your own stories, games, and/or animations with Scratch!

  Design & Dash

  Game Development Group (GDG)
  Age groups: Middle school, high school
  Location: Symposium Hall

  Become a game designer for our infinite scrolling video game! Control the rules by changing the character speed, jump height and other key variables. Will you make the game a breeze or crank up the difficulty for an epic challenge? 

  

  DIY Light-Up Cards 

  Girls Who Code
  Age groups: Middle school
  Location: Hallway in front of 1414

  Design a circuit to create your own light-up pop-up card! Learn the basics of electronic circuits by building your own using components such as batteries, resistors and copper. GWC will have several types of decorations and materials for you to customize your card.

  Drawing Electronics: Engineering Ignited

  Mechanical Engineering Department - Professor Pu Zhang
  Age groups: Middle school, high school
  Location: ES 1006

  Delve into the world of electronics with our hands-on by inventing your own electronics from scratch! All you’ll need is a silver ink pen that can draw circuits on paper, then watch as your drawings come to life with electric potential.

  We'll also provide you with a range of basic electronic units, including switches, batteries, LEDs and transistors. Throughout the session, we’ll guide you through the process, helping you understand the principles behind each component and how they work together to create functional devices. Let's bring your ideas to life and have a blast with this electrifying activity!

  Egg Drop

  Pi Tau Sigma (Mechanical Engineering Honor Society)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
  Location: ES 2008W (near balcony)

  Design and build your own device to protect an egg from breaking when dropped from a tall balcony!

  Electromagnetic Silent Disco

  Professor Scott Craver (Electrical & Computer Engineering Department) 
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: ES 2303 (Media Core)

  Our dance floor uses electromagnetic fields instead of sound. You can wind a loop of wire and attach it to a pair of earbuds so that you can hear the music when you hop on the dance floor. We'll show you some moves that illustrate how the fields work.

  Elephant Toothpaste Explosion

  Out in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (oSTEM)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: Center of Excellence Hallway

  Get ready for a foamy, bubbly eruption that looks like a giant tube of toothpaste exploding! In this hands-on activity, you’ll mix special ingredients to create a chemical reaction that shoots out colorful foam right before your eyes. It’s messy, magical and full of science fun! 

  Engineering in the Garden

  Roberson Museum and Science Center
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: ES 2nd floor - balcony near elevator 

  Let's start a garden! While learning the ins and outs of gardening and what it has to do with engineering, you will start your own garden to take home by planting your own seeds.

  Ignition Technician School, Rocket Motor Assembly Race

  AeroBing
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: ES 1304

  Ignition Technician School: Create an electronic match — a simplified version of the one we use to ignite our rockets for testing and launching — and test the match's integrity (safety glasses provided). Participants will strip wire and use pliers to craft the perfect e-match!

  Rocket Motor Assembly Race: Test your dexterity to assemble one of our reusable rocket motors faster than an AeroBing member! Learn about the rocket components that go into a simple rocket motor and the data acquisition components on our mini-motor testing stand.

  Kaleidoscopes: Where Colors Come to Life

  National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
  Location: Center of Excellence Hallway

  Design your own magical kaleidoscopes and watch as colorful patterns come to life with every twist!

  Lights, Circuits, Action! Exploring Microelectronics and Hacking Secrets with Raspberry Pi & Arduino

  Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity - Professors Ping Yang and Dmitry Ponomerav 
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: ES 2008E

  Engage in hands-on activities to explore various electronic and microelectronic components and their functions, understand how Raspberry Pi and Arduino operate, and compare the differences! Experiment with different plug-and-play microelectronic modules to observe how changing components affects the outcomes of activities. Plus, learn how encryption and decryption work, and explore how side-channel and covert channel attacks can uncover sensitive information through a password-guessing game.

  Liquid Light Show: DIY Lava Lamps

  Women in Tech
  Age group: Elementary school
  Location: Hallway in front of ES 1414

  Make your own lava lamp with just a few simple ingredients. Watch your pools of color dance and float as you learn about chemical reactions!

  Liquid Nitrogen Fun

  Materials Research Society
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
  Location: ES 2001

  Observe how different materials change when exposed to the extreme cold of liquid nitrogen (-196°C). Learn about how temperature affects molecular movement, rigidity and brittleness (from a distance for safety purposes).

  Magno-Goo: Slime with a Charge

  Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE)
  Age groups: Middle school, high school
  Location: Rotunda

  Ever wonder how magnets work? Why do they push and pull? See an in-action demonstration of the power of magnetism with magnetic slime!

  Make Your Own Stethoscope

  Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
  Location: Center of Excellence Hallway

  Ever wonder how the doctor can hear your heart beating? You have probably seen that the doctor uses a tool called a stethoscope to do this. How does it work? Find out and build your own to take home. 

  MarioParty Battle Bots

  Watson Combat Robotics League (WCRL)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: Rotunda

  Play MarioParty with robots! WCRL has bots of all shapes and sizes, and you can challenge them against each other in a MarioParty-style game, trying to pop as many balloons on the back of your opponents' bots as possible!

  Marshmallow Catapult 

  Tau Beta Pi
  Age group: Elementary school
  Location: Hallway outside of ES 1304

  Design your own catapult and put it to the test in games like Cup Tower Knockdown, Connect Four Launch and Cup Toss Challenge!

  Micro-Nano Adventures: Unveiling the Art of Micro-Nano-Manipulation and Control

  Mechanical Engineering Department - Professor Kaiyan Yu
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: ES 1304

  Discover the captivating science of micro- and nanomanipulation with Professor Yu's research group! Engage in a hands-on experience with the Smart Micro-Particle Manipulation Chamber, where magnetic micro-particles mimic the motions of tiny robots in a tank filled with a fascinating ferrofluid mixture.

  Using a 3D-printed device featuring a 7x7 array of electromagnets controlled by an intuitive tablet interface, you can create mesmerizing patterns in the ferrofluid. Adjust magnetic field strength, toggle electromagnets, and experiment with configurations to explore how microparticles respond in real time.

  Unlock the secrets of control systems and nanostructure assembly while immersing yourself in this exciting journey. Join us to explore the possibilities of this cutting-edge field and unleash your creativity in advancing future technology.

  Pinewood Derby Cars

  Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: ES Rotunda

  Make fast wooden race cars, color them in bright colors and race them against your friends.

  Pixel Art Coloring Fun

  ColorStack 
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
  Location: Center of Excellence Hallway

  Get ready to color like a pro with a creative twist! Transform numbers into colorful masterpieces by filling in pixelated designs - it's like solving a puzzle and making art at the same time. Print, color and watch your creations come to life, one square at a time!

  Pom-Pom Poppers

  American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
  Location: Center of Excellence Hallway

  Ready, aim, fire! Using simple materials like plastic cups and balloons, build a device to launch pom-poms into the air and hit the targets! Can you build the best pom-pom popper?

  Puff Mobiles: Race Into Renewable Energy

  Society of Women Engineers (SWE)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
  Location: ES Hallway outside of 2300

  Using just straws, Lifesavers candies, paper and tape, design and build a wind-powered car! Can your Puff Mobile zoom across the finish line with the fewest puffs of air? Test your engineering skills and see how renewable energy like wind power can drive innovation.

  Rubber Band Car Making

  Theta Tau (Professional Engineering Fraternity)
  Age groups: Middle school
  Location: Center of Excellence Hallway

  Make your own homemade rubber-band wind-up car and see how far it can go!

  Spin into the Future: Design a Homopolar Motor

  Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: Rotunda

  Create a spinning homopolar motor! Assemble a battery, neodymium magnet and copper wire to create your own simple motor. Students can get creative and personalize their motor with craft supplies, bending the wire to create different shapes and adding decorative paper to make it their own.

  Vibrobots: Build Your Own Rover

  ������Ƶ Rover Team
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: Rotunda

  Design and build your own mini-rover! Powered by vibration, these little robots can move and dance around. Also, watch how the BURT rover drives, and enter the raffle to name the 2025 rover.

• Afteroon Session

  3D Printing Live Demo

  Professor Fuda Ning and Research Group 
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: ES Hallway near room 1100

  Learn about 3D printing — also known as additive manufacturing — by watching state-of-the-art printers. Also, see samples of the cool things that we have printed in our lab!

  Amateur Radio 

  Watson Amateur Radio Club
  Age groups: Elementary School, Middle School, High School
  Location: ES hallway between rooms 2303 and 2100)

  Amateur radio — also known as ham radio — communicates across the street, around the world or even with people and satellites in space! Even when the power's out and the landlines and cell phones don't work, ham radio is there with a battery, a radio and a wire. Ham radio lets us make lifelong friends and offers a hands-on technical education. It provides the resources and encouragement to experiment and to design and build with the latest communications technologies.

  Arduino Project Demonstrations

  Engineering Design Division (EDD) - First Year Engineering Program
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: Center of Excellence Link

  Investigate interactive projects built by our student teams using Arduino, an open-source prototyping platform. Projects include Bop-it, Horse Race, Maze Runner, Reaction Time Tester, Simon Says, Text Adventure and Whack-a-Mole.

  Arduino Windmills: Generate Your Own Power

  Society of Asian Scientists & Engineers (SASE)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: ES 2008E

  Using popsicle sticks, our 3D printed bases and a hairdryer, make your own windmill that will generate its own power. May the best windmill win!

  Bouncy Ball Bonanza

  Alpha Omega Epsilon (AOE)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
  Location: Rotunda (approaching Center of Excellence link)

  Make your own bouncy ball! Choose some of your favorite color glitter, add glue and borax, and watch the magic happen right in front of your eyes. Take home your unique bouncy balls and see which bounces the highest!

  Candy Float Challenge

  Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering (IISE)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
  Location: Center of Excellence Hallway

  Design and construct a tinfoil boat capable of carrying a candy load across the water. Experiment with different designs and discover how small adjustments can make a big impact on performance. How much candy can your boat hold? Afterward, take your boat and candy home to enjoy your engineering success!

  Design & Dash

  Game Development Group (GDG)
  Age groups: Middle school, high school
  Location: Symposium Hall

  Become a game designer for our infinite scrolling video game! Control the rules by changing the character speed, jump height and other key variables. Will you make the game a breeze or crank up the difficulty for an epic challenge? 

  DIY Light-Up Cards 

  Girls Who Code
  Age group: Middle school
  Location: Hallway in front of 1414

  Design a circuit to create your own light-up-pop up card. Learn the basics of electronic circuits by using components such as batteries, resistors and copper! GWC will have several types of decorations and materials for you to customize your card.

  DIY Terrarium: Create Your Own Mini Green World

  Engineers for a Sustainable World
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: ES 1006 

  Dive into the world of plants and ecosystems by building your own mini terrarium. Using clear jars or bottles, create tiny, self-sustaining environments full of green plants, cool decorations and natural beauty. It’s like making your own little jungle in a jar!

  

  Egg Drop

  Pi Tau Sigma (Mechanical Engineering Honor Society)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
  Location: ES 2008W (near balcony)

  Design and build your own device to protect an egg from breaking when dropped from a tall balcony!

  Electromagnetic Silent Disco

  Professor Scott Craver (Electrical and Computer Engineering Department) 
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: ES 2303 (Media Core)

  Our dance floor uses electromagnetic fields instead of sound. Wind a loop of wire and attach it to a pair of earbuds so that you can hear the music when you hop on the dance floor. We'll show you some moves that illustrate how the fields work.

  Elephant Toothpaste Explosion

  Out in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (oSTEM)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: Center of Excellence Hallway

  Get ready for a foamy, bubbly eruption that looks like a giant tube of toothpaste exploding! In this hands-on activity, you’ll mix special ingredients to create an exciting chemical reaction that shoots out colorful foam right before your eyes. It’s messy, magical and full of science fun.

  Ignition Technician School, Rocket Motor Assembly Race

  AeroBing
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: ES 1304

  Ignition Technician School: Create an electronic match — a simplified version of the one we use to ignite our rockets for testing and launching — and test the match's integrity (safety glasses provided). Participants will strip wire and use pliers to craft the perfect e-match!

  Rocket Motor Assembly Race: Test your dexterity and try to assemble one of our reusable rocket motors faster than an AeroBing member! Learn about the rocket components that go into a simple rocket motor and the data acquisition components on our mini-motor testing stand.

  Engineering in the Garden

  Roberson Museum and Science Center
  Age groups: Elementary School, Middle School, High School
  Location: ES 2nd floor - balcony near elevator 

  Let's start a garden! While learning the ins and outs of gardening and what it has to do with engineering, you will start your own garden to take home with you by planting your own seeds. 

  Kaleidoscopes: Where Colors Come to Life

  National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
  Location: Center of Excellence Hallway

  Design your own magical kaleidoscopes and watch as colorful patterns come to life with every twist!

  Liquid Light Show - DIY Lava Lamps

  Women in Tech
  Age groups: Elementary school
  Location: Hallway in front of ES 1414

  Make your own DIY lava lamp with just a few simple ingredients. Watch your pools of color dance and float as you learn about chemical reactions!

  Observe how different materials change when exposed to the extreme cold of liquid nitrogen (-196°C). Learn about how temperature affects molecular movement, rigidity and brittleness (from a distance for safety purposes).

  Magno-Goo: Slime with a Charge

  Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE)
  Age groups: Middle school, high school
  Location: Rotunda

  Ever wonder how magnets work? Why do they push and pull? See the power of magnetism with magnetic slime!

  Make Your Own Stethoscope

  Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
  Location: Center of Excellence Hallway

  Ever wonder how the doctor can hear your heart beating? You have probably seen that the doctor uses a tool called a stethoscope to do this. Have you ever wondered how it works? Find out and build your own to take home. 

  MarioParty Battle Bots

  Watson Combat Robotics League (WCRL)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: Rotunda

  Come play MarioParty with robots! WCRL has bots of all shapes and sizes, and you can challenge them against each other in a MarioParty-style game, trying to pop as many balloons on the back of your opponents' bots as possible!

  

  Marshmallow Catapult 

  Tau Beta Pi
  Age group: Elementary school
  Location: Hallway outside of 2300

  Design your own awesome catapult and put it to the test in exciting games like Cup Tower Knockdown, Connect Four Launch and Cup Toss Challenge!

  Meet Watson's Robot Dog

  School of Computing - Professor Shiqi Zhang
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: ES Hallway leading to 1006

  We will demonstrate our legged robot, which can move around, walk through crowds and interact with people. Hear about how the robot works and the cool robotics research happening in our labs. Plus, get a lollipop delivered from the dog itself!

  Paper Airplanes

  Watson Scholars Program
  Age group: Elementary school
  Location: ES 2001

  Making paper airplanes is more than just a fun activity - it's a great way to engage with real-world engineering concepts! When you fold a piece of paper into a plane, you're essentially designing a flying object, which is directly related to aerospace engineering. Whether you're aiming for distance, speed or accuracy, this event will show you how science, engineering and design come together to make things fly. 

  Pinewood Derby Cars

  Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: ES Rotunda

  Make fast wooden race cars, color them in bright colors and race them against your friends!

  Pixel Art Coloring Fun

  ColorStack 
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
  Location: Center of Excellence Hallway

  Get ready to color like a pro with a creative twist! Transform numbers into colorful masterpieces by filling in pixelated designs — it's like solving a puzzle and making art at the same time. Print, color and watch your creations come to life, one square at a time!

  Pom-Pom Poppers

  American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
  Location: Center of Excellence Hallway

  Ready, aim, fire! Using simple materials like plastic cups and balloons, build a device to launch pom-poms into the air and hit the targets! Can you build the best pom-pom popper?

  Puff Mobiles: Race Into Renewable Energy

  Society of Women Engineers (SWE)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
  Location: ES Hallway outside of 2300

  Using just straws, Lifesavers candies, paper, and tape, you'll design and build your very own wind-powered car! Can your Puff Mobile zoom across the finish line with the fewest puffs of air? Test your engineering skills and see how renewable energy like wind power can drive innovation!

  Rubber Band Car Making

  Theta Tau (Professional Engineering Fraternity)
  Age group: Middle school
  Location: Center of Excellence Hallway

  Make your own homemade rubber-band wind-up car and see how far it can go!

  Spin into the Future: Design a Homopolar Motor

  Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: Rotunda

  Create a simple, spinning homopolar motor! Assemble a battery, neodymium magnet, and copper wire, to create your own simple motor. Students will be encouraged to get creative and personalize their motor with craft supplies, bending the wire to create different shapes and adding decorative paper to make it their own!

  Vibrobots: Build Your Own Rover

  ������Ƶ Rover Team
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
  Location: Rotunda

  Design and build your own mini-rover! Powered by vibration, these little robots can move and dance around. Also, watch the BURT rover drive, and enter the raffle to name the 2025 rover.

  Water Puzzles

  Mechanical Engineering Department
  Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
  Location: ES 1304

  Explore the magic of a water surface by building shapes from 3D-printed building blocks.

High School Track

Are you a high school student interested in learning more about the engineering field? Take advantage of our teen-only track, running concurrently with the other Community Day activities. Sign up for one of the two available sessions, morning or afternoon, while space is available (limited to 20 students per session). All sessions will be held in the Multipurpose Room at the Center of Excellence.

• High School Activities

  Engineering in Action Workshop

  Collins Aerospace (engineers and Watson alumni)
  Morning Session: 9:45-10:30 a.m.
  Afternoon Session: 1:15-2 p.m.
  

  Join Collins Aerospace engineers for an interactive workshop exploring problem-solving and teamwork in STEM! First, tackle the Pig Design Challenge to learn how effective communication and attention to detail are essential in the engineering field. Then, team up for the Blindfolded RC Car Race, where you will navigate an obstacle course using anything but your voice to demonstrate how a programmer communicates with a computer. These engaging activities highlight the collaboration, creativity, and skills that drive innovation in engineering!  

  Engineering & Computer Science Student Panel

  Watson College Scholars Program
  Morning Session: 10:30-11 a.m.
  Afternoon Session: 2: 2-2:30 p.m

  Hear from a panel of students from the six undergraduate engineering disciplines at Watson College (biomedical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer engineering, electrical engineering, industrial and systems engineering, and computer science). They’ll share their “day in the life” of a Watson student, talk about the cool projects they’re working on and offer advice for pursuing engineering. 

  3D Printing and Computer-Aided Design Workshop

  Watson Combat Robotics League (WCRL)
  Morning Session: 11:15-12 p.m.
  Afternoon Session: 2:45-3:30 p.m. 

  The Watson Combat Robotics League (WCRL) will show basic Computer Aided Design (CAD) and 3D printing. Join our team for demonstrations and hands-on opportunities with our metal full-combat robots. Learn about how engineers use CAD to create and prototype projects and discover the ways 3D printing can be used to turn these ideas into reality. Come with questions to ask our full-combat team members about their robot, designs, engineering practices and anything STEM-related! 

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Sponsors

Thank you to all those who support Watson College's Engineers Week!