Jackson Taylor, Isaac Wu and Dane Quinn assemble a wind turbine.Grade 9 students Jackson Taylor, Isaac Wu and Dane Quinn assemble a wind turbine for a Take Our Kids to Work Day activity organized by the Faculty of Engineering.

Kids take a close look at a day’s work on campus

A record turnout of 56 ninth-grade students were on campus Wednesday for Take Our Kids to Work Day, a series of activities organized by the University of Windsor to help youths explore possible career paths and to raise awareness of the programs offered by the university.

Aidan Winter-Robertson of Walkerville Collegiate Institute, son of communications professor Jim Winter, called the activities very informative.

“It was helpful to carve a real pathway to my future,” he said.

The hands-on sessions included:

  • a game testing ability to keep social media accounts secure and safe;
  • listening to heartbeats and lung sounds on human-like mannequins;
  • analyzing footprints, fingerprints, chemicals and DNA;
  • a stock market simulation;
  • a test of sport performance — running, throwing, planking; and
  • constructing a wind turbine from a LEGO kit and competing to produce the greatest energy output.

“This is a lot of fun,” said Dane Quinn of Assumption High School, after his team’s turbine registered 7.9 volts of electricity.

See more photos from the day on the UWindsor Facebook page.

—article and photo by Marta Obersat-Johnson