The Coats girls’ 4-H project is helping them learn skills that grown men and women might envy.
Melissa, 14, has taken electricity as a 4-H project for seven years; Jennifer, 12, is in her fifth year of electricity. Their father, Glen, thinks they’re almost ready to wire up a ceiling fan.
“Usually we try to do something that will get used,” Jennifer said during an interview earlier this week.
The lighted shelf they installed as a headboard for a bed is only one example of the functional projects that have come out of the Coats’ projects in recent years.
“Each one of them has done something similar to that,” Glen Coats said.
Melissa noticed that the possession arrows for the Admire School’s basketball games were red arrows painted on white poster board.
She put together wooden possession arrows, with red plexiglass inserts, and wired them for electricity, then donated them to the school.
The girls have found that their father, an electrical engineer, is a great resource; however, their interest in electricity and the educational and entertaining projects they can make, would be there without any prodding from Dad.
“You’re not mystified about how things work,” said Jennifer, who chose to make an education-oriented project this year.
By sandpapering off a bit of a coil of wire, building a basic structure for operation, and figuring out how to run the electrical wiring and connect it to Duracell batteries, Jennifer made an electric motor to enter for judging this evening at the Lyon County Free Fair.
She explained how it worked as she hooked it up for a trial run this week.
“It mainly depends on the electrical currents, magnetic fields,” she said.
“Whenever you have a coil of wire and run a current through it, you have a magnetic field,” Glen Coats added.
Melissa combined education and entertainment in her project, a replica of a game show set-up that easily could be used for family games.
“I always enjoyed Quiz Bowl,” she said, “so I thought this would be a good opportunity to use programming and a little bit of wiring.”
The project encompassed computer work, wiring and construction as she built a large white wooden box, complete with a timer that pauses, individual buzzers that contestants can press when they know the answers, and lights that show the user who has buzzed in.
“It’s like Jeopardy,” she said. “The moderator can see who buzzes in and ask for a response.”
The programmed timer pauses at the buzzer; if the contestant’s answer is incorrect, the moderator can re-activate the digital counter and give the opposing contestants an opportunity to buzz in before the computer counts down the seconds remaining on the timer. It is unquestionably ready to be used, not simply displayed, then tucked away in a closet.
“I think this one’s going to go to our local high school or grade school,” Melissa said.
The Quiz Bowl project was the most complex she has undertaken.
With the exception of the tiny computerized timer, “pretty much everything’s from scratch,” Melissa said. “I’ve got nine colors of wire in my project. It’s a mess!”
A robot Jennifer built for last year’s fair also has been a popular and functional project, long-term.
“I found that really fun to program and build,” Jennifer said; “programming was slightly difficult.”
She said that Melissa gave her advice during programming of the robot, which played the theme from “Star Wars” loudly as it moved on command in front of the judges.
“I think the whole fair heard it,” Melissa said.
Now the girls find themselves giving advice to their younger brother, 7-year-old Brent, who chose the electricity project for his first year in 4-H.
“He wanted to know on the stairway how you could turn on a switch at any point and have it go on,” Coats said.
Brent’s project is a series of wires and primitive switches that he moves by hand to turn on a small light bulb mounted on the left of his display.
“When I switch it to this, it goes on, and the light goes on,” he said, moving a length of sturdy wire from one side to the other, to illustrate his point as he made the bulb go on and off at any switch he chose.
Brent then turned his attention to one of Melissa’s old projects — a wooden ramp about 2 feet high, with an electronic eye near the top that trips a timer when a Hot Wheels car passes the starting line. He proved that some cars were faster than others, as a red digital clock recorded the times of each car.
The Coats siblings have learned that electricity can put the “fun” in functional through their 4-H projects. Earlier this week, they were preparing for tonight’s judging.
“Usually they ask a couple of questions to make sure you were paying attention,” Melissa said. “Mostly they just judge on whether or not it works and whether it was a good learning experience for you.”
Did she think she’d learned from her project?
“Oh definitely,” she said. “On these projects, you learn something new every time.”
Mark Say is the electrical project leader.