CQU Young Engineers: How Mirani boy is using lego to achieve dreams
A Mirani boy has his eyes set on being a pilot for Qantas or working for Elon Musk when he grows up. Read why he believes lego will help him achieve his dream. See the photos.
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A Mirani boy has his eyes set on being a pilot for Qantas or working for Elon Musk when he grows up.
Alec Pearson, 11, was in his element attending CQUniversity’s Young Engineers summer holiday camp in Mackay on Tuesday, where he was able to build an advanced lego aeroplane; learning about coding, programming and engineering.
He said he woke up in the middle of the night, sometimes several times a week to watch rocket launches in the United States.
“I get up quite a lot during the middle of the night to watch rockets launch in America, I have probably done that 20 times now,” he said.
“Mum is my alarm clock and will wake me up to the watch rocket launches,”
Alec’s ultimate career goal is to be a pilot for Qantas and if he cannot achieve this he wants to work for Elon Musk on his Starship rocket.
“It’s a very new rocket and it lands itself, so it’s fully recoverable and one day it will take us to Mars,” he said.
“It would be awesome to be involved in that.”
CQUniversity online systems and future proofing deputy director Pavle Jeric said Young Engineers holiday workshops were about nurturing the next generation’s interest in STEM careers.
“The theme is space exploration and the idea behind the specific workshops is to get the kids to understand that there is a wide range of careers that can be pursued in the STEM field,” Mr Jeric said.
“It is not just about a scientist in a white lab coat manipulating test tubes, there is a huge range of creative things that they can do and the space industry is a perfect example of this.”
Mr Jeric said in the first workshop children learned how to build and code an aeroplane.
“They learnt how to make the motors move and then we created variables to make sure the lights turn on and off when the aeroplane is about to take off or land,” he said.
“And they have learnt how to display the speeder which is going on display, so there is quite a bit of coding involved in addition to building lego.”
Mirani’s Dakota Melville, 11 said he enjoyed the aeroplane building workshop and the advanced coding involved.
“I found the coding part so cool, as I’m very interested in engineering, robotics and coding,” Dakota said.
East Mackay’s Keanu Ayles, 11, said he was interested in an engineering career.
“It has been so cool- we were able to build an aeroplane,” Mr Ayles said.
“We are doing advanced stuff like coding and programming, I think I want to design computers as my job one day.”
Young Engineers holiday workshops run once every school holidays and travel around Central Queensland, visiting Bundaberg, Gladstone, Rockhampton and Cannonvale.
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