Students bring engineering to Perth library summer program

From Perth Courier | Desmond Devoy

Where others would see a bunch of university students, last week, five lucky youngsters got to meet a real-life rocket scientist — and a polar explorer, just for added measure.

As part of a program from Carleton University called “Let’s Talk Science,” which brings the thrill of scientific discovery to young people, four students descended on the Perth and District Union Library on Aug. 15, to take the young people to a galaxy far, far away – alright, more like Mars. But that’s still pretty cool.

“We’re going to go on an adventure to Mars today,” said Adam Vigneron, who, along with Libby Sprigge and Sasha Zemskova are second-year graduate students in Carleton’s Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Their classmate Chris Nicol is a PhD candidate in the program.

“We are students who like to talk to other students about science,” he explained to his young charges.

“I work on rockets and satellites,” added Vigneron.

His friend Sasha had an equally cool job – literally.

“I am a polar explorer, everything to do with cold,” said Zemskova.

“She’s from Russia, so she loves everything cold!” joked Vigneron.

With homeland pride, Zemskova told the children about how her fellow countryman, Yuri Gagarin, became the first person in space in 1961.

“He couldn’t stay there a long time,” she said. “He went for one turn around the earth and he came back and it is lucky he was able to come back alive.” Upon returning to earth, Gagarin said that, “our earth is so beautiful. We have to do our best to share it.”

“The next place that we are looking to go is Mars,” said Vigneron. “It is a lot further away (than the moon.) We are sending robots there. Last summer, a robot landed on Mars. If robots land on Mars, they can send us back pictures.”

The students then proceeded to tell the children other ways in which they are trying to get pictures of the red planet, and other coloured planets too.

Pointing to a picture of the Hubble telescope, Vigneron explained that “that telescope is the size of a school bus. When these things are that massive, we get really good photos.”

The library’s summer reading club has been expanded this summer beyond books, arts, and crafts, towards incorporating science – explained at an age appropriate level, and with a bit of humour thrown in. Detailing how the Mars Rover had to be parachuted on to Mars, with air bag casing surrounding it, hitting the surface of the planet at the speed of a car on the highway, Vigneron joked that, if you were inside the craft at the time, “you would need a barf bag.”

The event ended with a demonstration of how long it takes messages to get from NASA control on earth to the Mars Rover, and back again. Using maps drawn by the children, a child would be sent out into the library to tell a student to move several paces in any one direction – driving home the frustration of sending out directions that can take hours to be received and acted upon.