Liberty Memorial Central Middle School sixth-grader Sam Micka, left, and his twin brother Zach Micka, flip light switches as their classmate Reed Parker-Timms quickly pedals a bike hooked up to a motor in an effort to make the bulbs shine brighter at a station dedicated to demonstrating how mechanical energy can be transformed into electrical energy during the Engineering Expo on Thursday, Feb. 25, 2016 at the School of Engineering on the Kansas University campus. Area middle schoolers spent the day experimenting, showing off their engineering projects and putting them to various scientific tests. The event continues through Saturday.

The Kansas University Physics and Engineering Student Organization wanted to build and demonstrate a device “too cool for kids to ignore,” president Austin Feathers said.

Their musical Tesla coil shooting out lightning bolts in tune with notes played on an electric keyboard seemed to do the trick.

Middle schoolers watching the machine on the KU engineering complex lawn Thursday morning clapped and cheered.

Bishop Seabury Academy sixth-graders Josh Williams, left, and Elizabeth Mangan watch as a trebuchet they designed launches a raquetball at a target during a demonstration at the Engineering Expo on Thursday, Feb. 25, 2016 at the School of Engineering on the Kansas University campus. Area middle schoolers spent the day experimenting, showing off their engineering projects and putting them to various scientific tests. The event continues through Saturday.

Kansas University freshman Bryant Carranza, of Olathe, pours sand into a bucket suspended from a pasta bridge designed by South Middle School eighth-grader Charlie Nigro, Lawrence, right, during the Engineering Expo on Thursday, Feb. 25, 2016 at the School of Engineering on the Kansas University campus. One entry in the pasta bridge competition held a weight of 56.2 pounds of sand before collapsing. Area middle schoolers spent the day experimenting, showing off their engineering projects and putting them to various scientific tests. The event continues through Saturday.

More than 3,000 middle and high school students and community members are expected to participate in this year’s KU Engineering Expo — themed “Engineering Around the World!” — which started Thursday and runs through Saturday at the School of Engineering.

Middle schoolers from around the area participated in competitions and watched demonstrations Thursday to kick off the annual event. Similar events for high schoolers were planned Friday, plus activities for the whole community on Saturday.

Feathers, an Overland Park senior majoring in electrical engineering, said his club welcomed the opportunity to try to get the attention of some future engineers.

“What we really like to share with younger kids, and what’s kind of the purpose of PESO, is outreach,” he said. “… to get them asking questions, to get them excited.”

Middle schoolers and things for them to do filled classroom after classroom inside the School of Engineering.

In one, chemical engineering major and Society of Women Engineers member Lexi Hunter, a junior from O’Fallon, Ill., led youngsters in mixing and dyeing their own play dough.

“Basically we are just showing them that everything you touch in life isn’t necessarily a solid or a liquid,” Hunter said.

The play dough, for example, falls into the category of a visco-elastic solid, she said.

Science terms aside, she said the take-home point is that materials are in flow and engineering can be used to transform them.

Across the hall, students from the National Society of Black Engineers guided middle schoolers in driving Lego robots playing soccer with a whiffle ball.

A future in engineering?

Some of the middle schoolers weren’t so sure.

“I think it’s cool, but it’s not for me,” said Kyra Uphoff, a seventh-grader visiting from Prairie View Middle School in LaCygne.

Others were all in.

Joshua Judd, an eighth-grader from Prairie View, traveled with a tool box housing a couple different vehicles he’d built and brought with him for the day’s event, including the chemical car and gravity car competitions.

“It was really cool,” he said. “I really like engineering, so that’s something I’m going to be doing in college. I’m going to try to major in engineering.”

If you go

The Kansas University Engineering Expo plans events open to the public from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday throughout the School of Engineering, 1520 W. 15th St.

Organizers suggest parking behind Carruth O’Leary and Joseph R. Pearson halls (near Memorial Drive and West Campus Road), due to lots near the engineering building being reserved for Saturday’s KU basketball game.

For more information, go online to groups.ku.edu/~kuesc/expo.