IN THE CLASSROOM

Brenna Barrios loves smashing things into pieces. Sometimes, the 11-year-old Costa Mesa student said, she buys objects just to break them apart. It’s not a case of a bad temper, though ? for a young engineer, it’s education.

“I just like breaking things, ripping them open and trying to figure out how to put them back together,” explained Brenna, who added that she had successfully reconstructed a plastic fan and a clicking ballpoint pen.

On Thursday, Brenna was among two dozen children at Girls Inc. joining in a workshop with engineers from Boeing. During the two-hour class, led by seven satellite engineers, the girls created rockets out of paper and film canisters and launched them into the air through a chemical reaction ? water mixed with a little Alka-Seltzer.

The Boeing employees visited Girls Inc. as part of National Engineers Week to talk about the many types of jobs that engineers do ? and to give a hands-on demonstration. The company has sent representatives to the Costa Mesa site before, but Thursday was the first rocket workshop.

“These women not only design satellites, they physically build them,” said Angela Hartwig, programs facilitator for Girls Inc. “That’s cool to the girls because it’s accessible.”

The afternoon started with a slide presentation in which the engineers outlined some of the things that engineers help build, from software and toasters to tennis shoes and rides at Disneyland. Afterward, the girls, ages 5 to 12, got a taste of spacecraft design by assembling their rockets and shooting them on the pavement outside.

Some of the girls said they hoped to become engineers when they grew up. Chelsea Davis, 9, wanted to be a videogame engineer so she could create her own Game Boy games.

For some, the rocket wasn’t the only engineering work they had done in the last few months. Home Depot recently sponsored a nationwide competition in which Girls Inc. teams built dollhouses from scratch, with the 20 winning teams heading to Georgia for a live charity auction. One of the winning teams this month was from the Costa Mesa site ? its house sold for $400.

Bianca Perez, 10, who worked on the dollhouse, said the project required a variety of jobs ? much like building a satellite. Among the features of the house were a baby room, a dance room and a juice bar.

“We tried to use teamwork to make it not that hard,” Bianca said.dpt.28-itc-2-CPhotoInfo5G1OE93R20060228ivd4cyknPHOTOS BY DON LEACH / DAILY PILOT(LA)Susan Sprainis helps Makayla Morgan build a paper rocket as she and other Boeing engineers visited Girls Inc. to talk about what they do for a living. Andrea Azevedo cheers as she snags her paper rocket before it hits the ground during an exercise with Boeing engineers. dpt.28-itc-1-CPhotoInfo5G1OE93P20060228ivd4brknPHOTOS BY DON LEACH / DAILY PILOT(LA)Susan Sprainis helps Makayla Morgan build a paper rocket as she and other Boeing engineers visited Girls Inc. to talk about what they do for a living.