My 12-year-old signed up for Mark Rober’s online engineering class. His first build was a mechanical engineering project that deals with food. He ended up designing an ice cream toppings dispenser.

I have very little engineering experience and I don’t work with tools so this was a challenge for me. He ended up using hot glue, drills, saws, and springs and we built prototypes and tested them before the final build. My son built more than 50% and did at least half of everything (except circular saw).

He now has a couple tubes that open upon pushing a button, shooting out a handful of your desired topping on your ice cream. It’s actually pretty cool and it works as we hoped.

I don’t really have any other comments. I just came here because I feel good about myself and I wanted to tell someone.