Budding engineers combine imagination with mechanical parts at Tulsa's Tinkering School

BY SARA PLUMMER World Staff Writer
Saturday, January 05, 2013
1/05/13 at 7:26 AM

When it comes to disassembling household appliances and machines to make a moving robot from the pieces and parts, there's one pet peeve that has surfaced for 14-year-old Chris Bird.

"I hate companies that use glue," the Owasso eighth-grader said as he explained how he and his team are taking a speaker, TV, printer and radio and turning them into a robot that moves its arm and blows its nose.

The first challenge is taking those machines apart, which is where the glue frustration comes from. By Thursday, their robot was beginning to take shape.

"We're going to name it Bob or Steve; we haven't decided yet," Bird said.

Bird is one of 25 middle and high school students who spent three of their remaining days of winter break in Tinkering School, a multiday project put on by the Tulsa Alliance for Engineering and held in the Hardesty Center for Fab Lab Tulsa.

The students, divided into teams of five, were given several appliances or machines found around most homes such as cell phones, paper shredders and DVD players, and then tasked with taking them apart and using the parts, along with resources at the Fab Lab, to make a moving sculpture, said alliance coordinator Xan Black.

Tinkering School started Wednesday and wrapped up Friday, and the students' finished sculptures will soon go on display at several Tulsa City-County Library branches.

The Tulsa Alliance for Engineering is a partnership between TCC, the University of Tulsa, Tulsa Technology Center, Oral Roberts University, Oklahoma State University-Tulsa and the University of Oklahoma-Tulsa.

The alliance was formed two years ago with the goal of better educating, developing, recruiting and retaining engineers in the Tulsa area.

The nonprofit Fab Lab, or fabrication laboratory, has assembled an array of state-of-the-art equipment and computers in one place for community use. It's modeled after the Fab Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Fab Lab Tulsa Executive Director Nathan Pritchett said a variety of people use the center, including businesses, engineers, architects, artists, hobbyists, educators and students, so Tinkering School was a great fit.

"That's part of our mission - keep kids interested in science and math," Pritchett said, adding that the center offers students the chance to just tinker. "As shop classes go away, kids don't have a chance to work with hand tools and take things apart to see how they work."

As they've taken their machines apart, the students have had to figure out how they worked in order to re-purpose the pieces for their sculptures, Black said.

"They have to be outside the box," she said. "You're going to take this waste and make something beautiful."

Original Print Headline: Students vs. machines

Sara Plummer 918-581-8465
sara.plummer@tulsaworld.com

Associated Images:

Students Josh Dudley (from left), 14, of Bixby; Kyle English, 14, of Tulsa; and Iyan Smith Williams, 12, of Tulsa dismantle a Christmas reindeer yard decoration to re-create it as a wind-powered sculpture with lights at Tulsa's Fab Lab. JAMES GIBBARD/Tulsa World

Student Olivia Hankins takes wires from old circuit boards to use on a water windmill she and other students were making at Tulsa's Fab Lab. JAMES GIBBARD/Tulsa World

Chris Bird, 14, of Owasso attaches old electronic parts together to make a robot at Tulsa's Fab Lab on Thursday. JAMES GIBBARD/Tulsa World

Students Ty Hall (from left), 14, of Tulsa, Zach Schwarz, 13, of Jenks and Wyatt Schifferdecker, 14, of Tulsa work together to make a robot from dismantled electronic parts. JAMES GIBBARD/Tulsa World