Did the Mars Exploration Rovers find evidence of life on the Red planet? How long is a Martian year? Today, nearly 100 Washington area YMCA summer campers, ages 11-13 years, learned the answers to these questions when they teamed with Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN) for a celebration of the planet Mars.
Raytheon, as part of its MathMovesU middle school initiative, is showing young people how engaging math and science can be with a series of Mars-related activities, including hosting the YMCA campers at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's annual MARS Day and recognizing the winner of the national MathMovesU Mission to MARS online math challenge. In anticipation of MARS Day, summer campers from the Calomiris, National Capital and Capital View branches of the Metropolitan Washington YMCA worked to construct models of the solar system earlier this week. The campers showcased them on the steps of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum today before entering the museum to view the exhibits.
In addition to festivities at the museum, Raytheon announced the winner of its MathMovesU Mission to Mars challenge. Nicholas Grazio, a 7th grader from Wake Forest, N.C., won the grand prize - a Raytheon sponsored VIP trip for four to Washington, D.C ., and a VIP guided tour through the MARS Day exhibits. Aimed at encouraging kids to sharpen their math skills in an entertaining, interactive format, the MathMovesU challenge saw more than 700 sixth to eighth grade students nationwide participate in the space-themed, online math competition.
"It's heartening to see the national response for our MARS Day festivities, which tells us if we appeal to students' imaginations, they are more receptive to math and science," said Kristin Hilf, Raytheon's vice president of community relations. "MathMovesU helps middle schoolers build their math skills virtually, through activities and contests that can help them realize that math is relevant to their interests and can actually be a lot of fun."
Raytheon, a defense technology company with 2006 sales of $20.3 billion and 73,000 employees worldwide, believes that tomorrow's engineers and technologists need to be excited by and interested in math and science today. The MathMovesU initiative (www.mathmovesu.com) is a virtual space that helps stimulate interest in math by providing rich content tied to middle schoolers' passions, contests, prizes and events to inspire them to pursue educational tracks that will ideally lead to careers in science and engineering.
Contact: Corinne Kovalsky Steve Collins Raytheon Company Text 100 781.522.5144 617.399.4911 cjkovalsky@raytheon.com raytheonmmu@text100.com
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