Screws, plastic and circuit boards fly through the air as 10- and 11-year-olds in safety goggles peel away at layers of old electronic equipment with screwdrivers and hammers.
The mayhem is just part of Camp Invention, an eccentric playground where Colorado might just find its next Nikola Tesla. The weeklong camp is held at Maple Grove Elementary.
“It’s like the dark side of Santa’s workshop,” mused Berni Joha, coordinator for Camp Invention’s Take-Apart Session.
The third, fourth and fifth graders first take apart ancient electronics like VCRs, fax machines and portable fans so that they can put them back together again in a manner of their own invention.
“The goal of the program is to stimulate interest in math and science and creativity,” said Dave Rodovich, the camp’s director and former teacher at Maple Grove.
After the demolition stage of the project, Camp Invention participants design their own Rube Goldberg machine from the recovered parts. The machine, which works in a series of steps like the game Mouse Trap, will ultimately pop a water balloon on a target.
Jared Schwartz, 10, and Austin Wolfe, 10, used the chassis of an old printer to rig up one of the printer’s circuit boards on a string. Some mechanism, which they had not decided upon, would release the circuit board. The board would swing down and prick the water balloon with its sharp underside.
Although the classroom writhed with frenzy, the participants also learned some basic science and engineering principles.
Jared held up an inch-long glass cylinder and called it a miniature light bulb. Joha corrected him, “That’s a fuse.”
“Oh, it is,” Schwartz said. “You can see the voltage right there.”
Another student pried the motor out of an old cassette player and hooked it up to a D size battery to make it run.
This is Camp Inventions ninth year at Maple Grove. About 95 students attended from July 14 through 18. Rodovich said they usually have about 100.
Invent Now Kids, an educational company based in Akron, Ohio, developed the curriculum.
Even art and recess activities are designed for thinking. At the Art Park, the children learn some basic physics principles by building mobiles in which objects are balanced from a central point. In Recess Remix, students play a game, and then stop to brainstorm ideas of how to make it more fun.
The curriculum rotates each year so that kids can learn something new in consecutive years in the program.
Children as young as five can participate at Camp Invention, although, the little ones are not involved in the heavy demolition. A group of about 20 industrious young people were building filters to clean pollution out of the water at “Sludge City.”
Using gravel, coffee filters, dirt and cotton, the groups of youngsters layered materials in funnels, then poured their sludge filled water slowly through them, waiting to see how they would come out.
“I hate it when it’s dirty, but I love it when it’s all clean,” said 5-year-old Ronan Baccarini.