WITH his hands clutched tightly around the control yoke and eyes fixed on the altitude gauges in front of him, teenager Satria Salimi was ready to fly his own plane for the first time.
But within a few minutes, the plane crashed - not once but three times.
Luckily, the 14-year-old was not flying an actual plane but a virtual one in a flight simulator at Nanyang Polytechnic.
Satria, a secondary 2 student from Admiralty secondary, was one of thousands of secondary school students who took part in workshops held at the five polytechnics last week as part of the annual Engineering Week.
The event is organised to promote engineering - which has become less popular as a field of study in recent years - to secondary school students.
The students got to fly planes, build solar-powered boats and make aspirin from scratch.
Satria said he did not know that so much hand-eye coordination was needed in the work of an aircraft engineer.
The flight simulator he tried will be used in two new courses, aeronautical and aerospace technology and aerospace systems and management, which will be offered by Nanyang Polytechnic's School of Engineering next year.
The students had to be meticulous in their work, especially when it came to making aspirin.
This reporter tried her hand at it, only to find out later that she had got the amount of the chemicals wrong.
The work needed creativity too. She was stumped when a boat which she and some students made out of plastic bottles and styrofoam kept tipping over when it was placed in a container of water.
The boat had balanced perfectly on the table.
A quick-thinking student saved the day by sticking a piece of plasticine to one side of the boat.
Judging by the fun and laughter which filled the laboratories, the students enjoyed themselves nonetheless.
Nanyang Polytechnic's chemical engineering deputy director Yow Kum Pang said: 'Engineering is about applying the principles of science to everyday life. The students are taught this through the experiments.
'We hope they go away thinking that engineering is relevant and fun.'
'My hand-eye coordination is not good. I did not react quickly when I saw that my plane was not balanced, and it crashed so many times. Now, I know why pilots earn so much money.'
Admiralty secondary student Satria Salimi, 14, on the dexterity one needs to fly an aircraft.
'You have to be very careful and make sure that the right amounts of chemicals are added. If we make one wrong step, the medicine might become poisonous.'
Admiralty secondary student Amirul Mukminin Alfian, 14, who learnt how to make aspirin.
'Our boat sank when we placed it in the water for the first time as one side was heavier than the other. We had to try quite a few times to balance it. Finally, when we were successful, we felt so happy.'
Admiralty secondary student Ang Jie Ling, 14, who built a solar-powered boat out of recycled materials.
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