By Alex Simon

Young aspiring engineers can gain insight into their futures this weekend, as UK hosts the College of Engineering Day, more commonly known as E-Day.

E-Day is a celebration of everything UK’s College of Engineering offers and is targeted toward every age group from kindergarten to the 12th grade.

The event starts this Saturday at 9 a.m. in the Engineering Complex.

“We bring a lot of outside exhibitors to span to all of the age groups,” said Dorothy Rapp, College of Engineering marketing and communications graphic designer.

The event typically draws thousands of children and their parents to UK’s campus, encouraging girls and boys in elementary, middle and high schools to consider pursuing degrees in engineering.

“We have students that come to school here because of E-Day,” Rapp said.

Engineering is more often represented by nerdy students than by an exciting day filled with egg drops and fire tornadoes.

“We try to break that stereotype that engineers are nerds,” said Bob Edwards, College of Engineering director of marketing and communications.

Forty-five different institutions are sponsoring the day’s exhibitions, which include the tallest egg drop from around the state, at more than two stories, and, in years past, an edible car contest.

“Senior design students are going to be presenting the various projects they have been working over the past year,” mechanical engineering senior TJ Sweda said. “There are usually a bunch of demonstrations done by the departments. A previous demo was a miniature fire whorl.”

One of the most popular contests from the past years has been the Rube Goldberg contest, which requires teams or individuals to construct a complicated device out of at least 20 basic machines to perform a simple task.

E-Day comes at the end of Engineers Week and is an event that welcomes all.

“The event showcases what engineers do,” Edwards said. “We try to show that in a fun way.”

For more information about E-Day 2011, visit http://www.engr.uky.edu/eday/.

For parking directions, visit http://www.uky.edu/VisitorCenter/direction.htm.