Community Day: Saturday, Feb. 22
Innovative Technologies Complex, Binghamton University (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.
Note: General registration has closed. There are still openings for the high school track — see below.
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Morning Session
Amateur Radio
Watson Amateur Radio Club
Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
Location: ES hallway between rooms 2303 and 2100Amateur 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 LinkInvestigate 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.
Oobleck Stress Balls
Alpha Omega Epsilon (AOE)
Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
Location: Rotunda (approaching Center of Excellence link)Squish, squeeze and explore the science of oobleck by making your own colorful stress ball — sealed inside a balloon for mess-free fun! Feel the magic as it shifts between solid and liquid in your hands, then take home your very own squishy creation to enjoy.
Candy Float Challenge
Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering (IISE)
Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
Location: Center of Excellence HallwayDesign 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 2001Build your own stories, games, and/or animations with Scratch!
DIY Light-Up Cards
Girls Who Code
Age groups: Middle school
Location: Hallway in front of 1414Design 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 1006Delve 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 HallwayGet 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 elevatorLet'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 1304Ignition 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 HallwayDesign 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 2008EEngage 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 1414Make 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 2001Observe 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: RotundaEver 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 HallwayEver 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: RotundaPlay 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 1304Design 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 1304Discover 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 RotundaMake 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: Relocated to RotundaGet 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 HallwayReady, 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 2300Using 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 HallwayMake your own homemade rubber-band wind-up car and see how far it can go!
Seismic Shakedown
Mechanical Contractors Association of America (MCAA)
Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
Location: Symposium HallBuild a structure out of Lego bricks and see if it can handle some intense shaking!
Spin into the Future: Design a Homopolar Motor
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
Location: RotundaCreate 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
Binghamton University Rover Team
Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
Location: RotundaDesign 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.
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Afternoon Session
3D Printing Live Demo
Professor Fuda Ning and Research Group
Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
Location: ES Hallway near room 1100Learn 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 LinkInvestigate 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 2008EUsing popsicle sticks, our 3D printed bases and a hairdryer, make your own windmill that will generate its own power. May the best windmill win!
Oobleck Stress Balls
Alpha Omega Epsilon (AOE)
Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
Location: Rotunda (approaching Center of Excellence link)Squish, squeeze and explore the science of oobleck by making your own colorful stress ball — sealed inside a balloon for mess-free fun! Feel the magic as it shifts between solid and liquid in your hands, then take home your very own squishy creation to enjoy.
Candy Float Challenge
Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineering (IISE)
Age groups: Elementary school, middle school
Location: Center of Excellence HallwayDesign 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!
DIY Light-Up Cards
Girls Who Code
Age group: Middle school
Location: Hallway in front of 1414Design 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 1006Dive 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 HallwayGet 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 1304Ignition 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 elevatorLet'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 HallwayDesign 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 1414Make 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: RotundaEver 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 HallwayEver 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: RotundaCome 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 2300Design 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 1006We 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 2001Making 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 RotundaMake 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 HallwayGet 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 HallwayReady, 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 2300Using 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 HallwayMake 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: RotundaCreate 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
Binghamton University Rover Team
Age groups: Elementary school, middle school, high school
Location: RotundaDesign 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 1304Explore 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.
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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.mHear 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!
Sponsors
Thank you to all those who support Watson College's Engineers Week!
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