WALKER, Mich. — Students at Kenowa Hills Middle School hosted their paper roller coaster showcase on Friday.
The showcase was the first of its kind since STEM teacher Steve Feutz started the project.
Feutz and the students were all eager to show off all of their months-long hard work.
“Mr. Feutz is a great teacher. He helps us do work. If we need help, he's there,” said student Tyler Grooters.
Students claim Mr. Steve Feutz as their favorite teacher. After all, he’s the one who gave the students the roller coaster project that started six years ago.
“It's been exciting just for my students," Feutz said. "One, because the projects turned out good, and two, part of their project is to see how long it takes for the marble to go down as a little bit of competition to see whose can take the longest. They got really excited and a little friendly competition, and then it's always exciting to have your classmates come in and show off what you get to do.”
Creativity knew no boundaries when it came to the competitive project made with 3-D printing, allowing students more room to bring their ideas to life.
That includes students like Grooters, whose project features an elevator. Their group named it, "The Jungle Book."
“The starting feature is half pipe so we laser cut that in our laser-cutting room and then we have a tree that's 3-D printed and then covered with flasher,” Grooters said. "We have a 3-D printed snake as decoration and then we have all the track and an elevator that my friend designed, so it's the first of its kind here.”
Student Dominic Patton said with the complexity of the project, he’s happy with how his "Batcave" came out and said it wouldn’t have been possible without his peers’ team efforts.
“It was very hard and I couldn't have done it without these two, they helped me a lot and I helped them and obviously you can't get it done with only one person,” Patton said. "Three people definitely helped the whole project to come together and I’m very happy the way it turned out.”
Madison Wetter and her peer, Emerson, were inspired by Disney’s "Lilo and Stitch" characters. She said the two built a friendship while working together for several weeks.
“Why we had to make these roller coasters is to learn about potential kinetic thermal and mechanic energy,” Wetter said. "Potential energy is the energy of something sitting there with no movement and kinetic energy is the energy of movement.”
“We became pretty good friends through it because we really had to work through the problems of the project without getting mad at each other and I feel like we did a really good job of coming to a common ground," Wetter said.
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