Engineer Week Coming to Waimea Library

Rubik’s Cube Speedcubing champion Matty Inaba

Thelma Parker Memorial Public and School Library hopes to introduce the public to the “amazing” world of engineering next month during Engineer Week.

The library will host various events during the week of Feb. 16-22. There will be an Engineering Bash on Feb. 22 from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Various events throughout the week include an introduction into First LEGO League and Junior LEGO League as well as movies.

There will be hands-on experiments, demonstrations and displays. Some of those events include an air rocket design challenge, a robot challenge and more.

Rubik’s Cube Speedcubing champion Matty Inaba, a seventh grader at Hawaii Preparatory Academy, also will be on hand to talk about speedcubing, explain the “science” behind solving the cube, and speedcube with children and families.

Other collaborators on this event are Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, North Hawaii STEM Alliance, Parker School, W.M. Keck Observatory, and Waimea Elementary/Waimea Middle Na Paniolo Robotics Team.

“Engineers Week is a great time to celebrate how engineers make a difference in our community, and in our world,” said Pam Akao, Thelma Parker Memorial Public and School Library branch manager. “We are grateful to all of our community partners for helping us spotlight the innovative contributions of engineers to our lives.”

This is a NASA@My Library event. The Waimea library is one of 75 public libraries (and the only library in the state of Hawai‘i) chosen to be part of NASA@ My Library, which is an initiative to engage public audiences nationwide in informal and lifelong learning with the excitement of NASA exploration and discovery.

For more information, call 808-887-6067. The Thelma Parker Memorial Public and School Library, located at 67-1209 Māmalahoa Highway, is open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and from 12:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday.