Michigan Tech students set young minds on fire

HANCOCK — Wednesday morning some area students are learning that education doesn’t have to be boring. The first ever Copper Country Science and Engineering Festival is being held at Hancock high school.

The event is led by the Michigan Technological University Mind Trekkers student organization. Both science and engineering graduate students take time out to show the students some attention grabbing science projects.

Ashley Hvidhyld is a fifth year mechanical engineering student at Tech and chose to do a demonstration on fire and music. As music plays a metal tube shoots out flames in perfect unison to the beat of whatever music is playing. “Basically what’s going is there’s a speaker at one end of the tube and its pumping sound throughout it and it’s creating little sound waves with the fire,” Hvidhyld said of her popular exhibit.

With eyes as big as eggs the students can’t take their vision away. This is the reaction the principal and superintendent were hoping for.

Other popular exhibits included one that translates body heat into images on a TV. screen. The students also got a big kick out of a giant mirror that seemed to show everyone upside down.

The Mind Trekkers travel the U.S. delivering high energy hands on demonstrations and cultivating a thirst for science in young students. Tech will take this exhibit as far away as China and South Korea.