Students Check Out High-Tech Job Circuit Priest River Kids See Math, Science In Action At Technology Firms

To learn and test scientific theory, Paul Branham’s students arm-wrestle. They build cannons out of tin cans and fire them out the back door.

Branham is a hands-on kind of teacher. But he works at Priest River Junior High. What were he and his students doing 40 miles away this week, in Kootenai County?

Touring several high-tech companies.

“I wanted them to see science and math applied in business,” Branham said Wednesday.

About 120 Priest River eighth-graders visited Electronic Packaging Associates, Advanced Input Devices, and AMS Services Inc.

The tour idea arose from a gathering of the Idaho Technology Association, where Branham met Electronic Packaging president Alan Golub.

Golub wants to promote technology careers, especially among kids from towns such as Priest River where the traditional source of jobs is declining.

“What’s going to happen when we don’t have the timber industry? Who cares, because we’ll have other jobs,” he told teenagers who gathered in his shop.

Electronics Packaging was the first stop on the Tuesday and Wednesday tours.

The visits started with a pep talk by Seymour “Sy” Golub, Alan’s father and the company founder.

The elder Golub was named the world’s youngest inventor at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York. He told the kids that he might have been considered a nerd, although he was constantly getting in trouble for pranks.

Later in life, the nerd was hired by the Air Force to investigate Lockheed Corp. His company, started in 1964, was downsized to a mom-and-pop operation after the family’s recent move to North Idaho. But they have high hopes of expanding their land into a business/education park.

On the tour, Golub showed off the “electronic packages” that the company makes. They’re little metal boxes that hold computer circuitry.

Kids saw how powerful magnetic fields are used to hold metal while it was being ground. Across the shop at a drilling machine, Golub demonstrated computer-aided design and manufacturing.

“We’re going now at 3,300 rpms,” he said, his voice rising above the metallic whine. “We’re going to make the metal real smooth. It’s going to almost look like a CD when it’s done.”

Girls with blue-painted nails reached out to stroke the shiny surface of the metal.

“‘We want you guys to be the next generation of entrepreneurs, to develop your own products,” Golub told them. “When you’re doing your science project, think of the market for what you’re building. Is someone willing to pay you a buck for it, or $500?”

He pointed to a machine his father invented. It is a tabletop device used to bend metal wires into critter-like legs.

Students took turns trying it out.

“Check this out, I made some bugs,” student Charles Mulkey told his teacher.

This was all new stuff to the students.

“If nothing else, we planted some seeds with some of the kids.” the teacher said.

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