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Meyer Tool Hosts Annual Bring Your Kids to Work Day Event

May 14, 2019

On Thursday, April 25th Meyer Tool participated in the nationwide Take our Daughters and Sons to Work Day. We value the chance to spend time with our next generation, sharing what it takes to “build the impossible.” Our annual event provides the opportunity to create an educational experience beyond the classroom! This year, the day included two engineering challenges, an arts and crafts activity, a shop tour with exposure to multiple manufacturing processes, and a special cryogenic show designed to amaze both children and adults.

The celebration started off with breakfast and a beach ball ice breaker during which kids and their parents tossed a beach ball covered with questions around the room, learning more about each other’s interests. Next, Senior Project Engineer Chris Anton delivered a presentation on an engineer’s responsibilities on a day-to-day basis. Students learned about various engineering disciplines and how each one plays an important role in society – from the forks they were using during breakfast, to the buildings surrounding them. This bridged into the first activity of the day – a structural engineering group challenge. Using only construction paper and tape, small teams were tasked with engineering a structure capable of holding as much weight as possible before collapsing. All structures were then put to the ultimate test: a clipboard was placed on top of each structure with incremental amounts of weight added until only one design was left standing. 

All groups generated very creative ideas, and the ingenuity that each design brought to the table was astounding. To everyone’s amazement, the winning design, by some of our youngest attendees, held over 140 pounds, still refusing to collapse! Next, students brushed up on their chemistry skills by creating tie-dye t-shirts. Before lunch, kids participated in their second engineering challenge – making a helium filled balloon hover in place using only a pair of scissors, tape, stickers and paper clips, all while not allowing their balloon to fly up to the ceiling. Afternoon activities included a shop tour where each child received a personalized keychain made in our machine shop, viewed a welding demonstration, and participated in the main event – a cryogenic show! Eric and Christian Cunningham, once kids that came for the visit themselves, demonstrated entertaining tricks involving liquid nitrogen. In the highly anticipated show finale, all the kids got to smash frozen fruit into tiny pieces! Finally, our kids cooled off eating home-made liquid nitrogen ice cream while they played table games. 

Once again, our day was a resounding success, filled with many smiles, memories, and keepsakes to take back home to our families. Meyer Tool, being a family-owned business celebrating 50 years of building the impossible, cherishes building relationships with our partner/employees and their families.  We realize the importance of moments like these in bringing our family closer together. In addition, it supports our overall goal of educating the next generation about the value of manufacturing in the world around them, and the exciting career opportunities it can provide. What better place to start than with our own kids! It is fun to share the sense of pride and accomplishment fabricating cool, high-tech projects in our shop brings to our team as we work to reduce customer project risk while building cutting-edge cryogenic, pressure, and vacuum technologies in support of basic science, national labs, and high-tech industrial products.

​A special thank you goes out to Beth Laurin-Petrik, Diane Sheehan, and Julie Rios for planning and making the day a memorable experience for the kids.

Check out our recap video below!