My first summer workshop at Ranken Technical College started today -
Advanced Technology. There are 20 teachers in the class from all over the greater St Louis area (a couple teachers are from Illinois and one teacher is driving all the way in from Rolla every day). Today's themes were Automotive Technology, Aerospace, and Robotics. Every time I go to Ranken, I'm always so impressed with how clean they keep their labs and equipment. The chassis dyno room looks cleaner than my house.
This little section of the Collision Repair lab made me laugh. This is a "homework station." Those black and gray pieces that almost look like horses on a carousel or dogs at the racetrack are actually fenders. The fenders are covered with dents and scratches. Each student has to repair his or her fender for a grade, and at the end of the semester, they get to take their fenders home. The instructor said most students turn their fenders into clocks and hang them on the wall. I'm kind of guessing this is before they get married, because I can't imagine hanging a fender over the fireplace even if it does have a clock in it.
After lunch, I had my Boeing friend give a talk on aerospace. He's done this talk for me many times when I was teaching kids. He wasn't sure about doing the straw rocket portion of his talk, but the adults seemed to enjoy making the rockets as much as the kids did. We had a little competition, and of course the women won both times. They always tend to listen to instructions better.
We ended the day by building robots. I was a little nervous about this part of the day, because a couple guys in the class are coaches for the big robotics teams. However, they'd never built the little LEGO robots before, so they struggled along with everyone else. From my standpoint, I'm not used to working long days anymore, so I came home exhausted and went straight to bed.
