STEM starts at home. Fifteen year old builds a hovercraft.

Academics are great, and they are important. With junior engineers-to-be it is important to introduce hands-on as well. This is my younger son's project, finished after a two year span. He did the work on it and I taught the principles. More importantly, after a year and a half he realized that if he was not committed, it would not get done. He learned ownership and perseverance. These are the same things I try and teach our coops and our new hires at work.

Here is a video from the first day (video credit Adam Cotton):

Below is a test run after we made some initial improvements.

Needs some more performance, so we can get the RPMs and tip speed up. New camshaft is on the way and this is a great opportunity to teach welding - time for a home made high performance exhaust.

Working on projects like this at home is a good way to keep my own skills sharp. I've been lucky to work on some great projects. In corporate America, that is not always the case every day. Building and fixing things helps to reinforce the problem solving skill set which is so often important in a challenging work project or problem.

Plans for this hovercraft came from Universal Hovercraft in Rockford, Illinois. Not too far from where I work.