Northwest Florida high school students pursuing STEM careers took to the track at Five Flags Speedway, racing custom-built electric go-karts as part of the Electrathon program.
- Using STEM principles, students from schools including Navarre High School designed and built the electric go-karts from the ground up while developing critical thinking, problem-solving and teamwork skills along the way.
The program gives participants a chance to apply engineering concepts they’ve studied in the classroom to a real-world project with measurable results on race day.
For some students, the hands-on nature of the program is what makes it stand out from traditional coursework.
“It gets me a lot of hands-on work with mechanical things,” said Eysner Roque, a West Florida High School student. “Personally, I love to tinker with things and it’s a great way for me to build up and kind of have a stepping stone.”
Florida Power & Light Company supports the Electrathon America program at nearly 30 schools across the state, including five of the teams that raced at Five Flags Speedway.
The FPL-sponsored Northwest Florida schools represented at the race included Navarre High School, West Florida High School of Advanced Technology, Northview High School and Magnet Innovation Center.
The race gave students and their peers the opportunity to put their classroom learning into practice as they competed against other teams from across the region, showcasing the kind of technical and collaborative skills that could shape their future careers in engineering and related fields.
