U.S. Navy photo by Doug Davant Dahlgren School students work together to plan and build their catapult at this year’s Job Shadow Day.

Originally scheduled to take place around Groundhog Day (hence the ‘‘shadow” in its title), the event fell victim to the February snows.

Nevertheless, the Dahlgren sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students relished their time spent with their engineering and science mentors.

One such mentor was Mary Pilger, of Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division (NSWCDD’s) W61 (Warfare Systems Dept.) Branch. Pilger teamed along with Everett Wiles (Strategic and Weapons Control Systems Dept.); Hugh McCabe and Brian Dillon (Warfare Systems Dept.); Jeff Allen (Engagement Systems Dept.); and Tom O’Neill and Brian Dean (Asymetric Defense Systems Dept.) to teach young, curious minds a bit about the science and engineering happenings in their very hometown.

Pilger’s specialty was to involve the students in an exercise whereby they built a launch apparatus out of materials that included an empty cardboard box, rubber bands, wooden dowels, clothes hangers and an empty soda bottle.

‘‘I have no doubt that they can build something that will launch,” she said as she divided the group of students into three teams, called ‘‘Scorpions,” ‘‘Black Widows,” and something that sounded like ‘‘Red Fireball Penguins.”

‘‘They will be able to make something like a catapult, and I know they’ll be able to do it because, after all, we could make a simple spoon launch objects when we were in school.”

Pilger, a systems engineer from McLean, Va., who graduated from University of Mary Washington ‘‘just eight months ago,” heard about working as a mentor through a co-worker in her branch.

‘‘I haven’t really done any thing with students before,” she said. ‘‘I was a counselor at a cooking camp once but I don’t think that counts. ... I just really wanted to do this. That’s why I’m here.”

She said the challenge of helping young minds was rewarding in many other ways.

‘‘It really is. Often kids come up with more creative solutions to problems than adults, and it’s really fun to be a part of this.”

As flying objects, often wadded paper or other projectiles made from paper clips and duct tape, sailed through the air, enthusiastic loud whoops of middle-school joy filled the Dowell Community House.

One team utilized the rubber bands to provide energy to its catapult; another tapped the elasticity in coat hangers to make an object fly as each team was getting different lengths of success.

‘‘The object of this exercise is to teach the kids that there isn’t always a right answer for everything. ... They also learn by mistakes, and that’s the real point of doing this,” Pilger said. ‘‘Hopefully, they’ll all take something from this in learning about the potential of different ordinary items; for instance, there is a lot of compressed air energy that can be gotten from an empty, one-liter soda bottle to make something launch.”

In watching the students, one was reminded of the television show ‘‘MacGyver,” where something ordinarily commonplace would always have some potential in fashioning a useful tool in helping the show’s protagonist escape danger.

‘‘Our next challenge is to put a payload on the launched object,” Pilger said. ‘‘That’s when it really gets fun.”