The Peninsula
Doha: Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ) hosted 70 students for two week-long workshops on 3-D printing technology as part of Teach for Qatar initiative, a partner of Qatar Foundation.
The camps ran from July 24 to August 4 to introduce the students — aged 10 to 14 — to the world of 3-D printing, including how 3-D printers function, types of 3-D printing technologies and the Autodesk 123D design 3-D modelling software. Students were asked to apply Boolean operations to 3-D objects, create shapes using Autodesk 123D design software and model parts of LEGO blocks.
Building the LEGO parts was the most intensive day as the students were asked to use the parts in a competition that challenged them to use their 3-D printed LEGO parts to build a bridge.
A basic bridge design was given and students were divided into small groups to work together on building their bridges. The winning team was the one that created the most durable bridge.
The summer camps are part of TAMUQ’s STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) outreach initiatives to prepare young students for future studies in STEM topics, which are critical to Qatar’s future success.
Ziyad Shafik, Chief Facilitator of the camps and Postdoctoral Research Associate at TAMUQ, said: “The whole point of STEM is to encourage students to become engineers. Not all of them are exposed to engineering so they don’t know if they would be interested in it.
“Here, we are giving them a chance to be involved in scientific activities that are different from what they do in school.
“In school, it is much more theoretical but we get them involved in hands-on activities that are more related to real-life engineering experiences,” Shafik added.
