March is a very busy time for VP-Externals all across Ontario, as it is National Engineering Month! National Engineering month is the largest celebration of engineering excellence in Canada, where over 500 events are held across Canada to show youth how amazing the engineering profession is. National Engineering Month can be considered essential to the growth of the profession in Canada, since it exposes children to engineering and its benefits at a young age, making them more likely to become engineers when they are older.
One of the largest events University students in Ontario can participate in for National Engineering Month is the construction of Rube Goldberg machines. A Rube Goldberg Machine is a machine that does a simple task in a complicated but amusing way. An example of a Rube Goldberg machine would be one that moves a ball from place to place by setting off various different devices. This March, most engineering schools in Ontario will be constructing a Rube Goldberg machine, and will also be compiling a video which shows the machines being set off via cell phone text message vibrations. One school’s Rube Goldberg machine will end by activating a text message, which will be sent to the next school’s machine to start it. The final Rube Goldberg machine, this year built by Ryerson University in Toronto, will hit a button to light the CN Tower in downtown Toronto purple. The Unversity of Waterloo’s Rube Goldberg machine will be built on Saturday, March 7th and Sunday March 8th from 11 am – 4 pm in the Student Design Centre in Engineering 5. All those interested in building are welcome to join!
The Waterloo Engineering Society also uses National Engineering Month to volunteer and give back to the Kitchener-Waterloo Community. On Friday, March 13th we will be heading to Conestoga Mall to participate in CANstruction, an event where we build an interesting architectural structure out of food cans. All of the food cans will then be donated to the Kitchener-Waterloo Food Bank. On Sunday, March 22nd we will be pulling a school bus from Charles St. Terminal in Kitchener to the University of Waterloo Campus. All of the people participating in the Bus Pull are asked to collect pledges which will in turn be donated to OneROOF, an organization that helps homeless and at-risk youth in the Kitchener Waterloo Area.
All-in-all, National Engineering month offers Waterloo students the opportunity to teach youth in the Waterloo what engineers are all about: fun, ingenuity, integrity, and a willingness to make things that help our world be a better place!
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