Hundreds of children from the Binghamton community packed into the Innovative Technologies Complex (ITC) on Saturday for a chance to participate in science challenges and experiments, and to learn about what science looks like at a university.

More than 500 community members of all ages attended “Engineers Week Community Day,” a full day of events put on by the Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, in celebration of National Engineers Week. The program was coordinated and managed by approximately 40 Binghamton University student volunteers, who manned booths and interacted with the children.

David Berman, assistant to the dean of the Watson School, said that the event was an opportunity to inspire future generations and showcase some of the work being done at BU.

“We open up the Engineering and Science Building, and throughout the building we have activities and demonstrations that showcase the fun side of engineering,” Berman said. “It’s a chance for current engineering students to interact with future engineering students.”

The day kicked off with various hands-on activities that challenged participants to design and construct projects that could perform manual tasks. For example, the most popular activity was the egg drop, which tested the kids’ ability to design a container that could protect an egg during a 15-foot drop. The zip-line activity required participants to create a carrier that could transport a ping-pong ball to the bottom of a zip line by using weights or other inventive ideas.

“It was completely packed,” Berman said. “The entire walkway was filled with kids throwing [the eggs] over. It’s trying to encourage them to think of creative solutions to solving problems and it’s also a way to get kids interested in the STEM fields.”

Meranda Ruff, a junior majoring in biomedical engineering, managed the “Gumdrop Structures” station, in which participants were tasked with assembling a small-scale version of a building, made solely from toothpicks and gumdrops. She said that the kids’ feedback was extremely positive, as evidenced by the number of youngsters gathering at this activity.

“There has been a ton of traffic,” Ruff said. “We actually started running out of toothpicks, and I had purchased 2,400, so we started repurposing the old ones and disassembling structures as children were leaving. In general, they really like it. I didn’t think it would be the most popular, so I was extremely surprised by how many kids were over here being engaged.”

Six-year-old local William Raplee attended the event and said that the most fun activity of the day for him was “seeing through the goggles,” or experiencing the virtual reality simulation. One of the simulations recreated the experience of flying on a jet aircraft and, according to Raplee, was very realistic.

“For one of them, I was pretty scared,” Raplee said. “Because I was on jets, and I was so high that I was getting scared.”

Lily Monroe, 11 years old, took advantage of many of the day’s events. She said her favorite activity was the egg drop because she got to experiment with different structural models, and it made her feel like an inventor.

“Since I was little, I always liked to make new things and new ideas,” Monroe said. “My cousin is really big into inventing things, and I always used to talk to her about what I want to invent. I want to invent, like, floating machines and stuff like that.”