Mark Zenk’s Principles Engineering classes at Mankato West High School have done a marble sorting project for the past three years. The project involves students learning about manufacturing and engineering through the use of the Fischertechniks modeling system.

Students design and construct a marble sorter using different weighted marbles that model a real-life recycling center sorting system. To complete the project, Mark’s students wrote a computer program that would run the model that was constructed, and sort the marbles by weight.

Each year, Mark looks to the community for a speaker to come in and relate their real-world experiences to the principles to be learned through the marble project. This year, Mark was able to use the getSTEM website to find a speaker on short notice after a prior agreement had to be cancelled.

Kent Ross from Kato Engineering came to Mark’s third period class of 10th -12th graders and spoke to them about what he does at work. Kent was able to answer student questions about the workplace and his career, but also helped the students with their questions about the marble sorting project.