Students in Dr. Nghia Le’s engineering classes display some of the three-dimensional objects they created with equipment purchased through Chevron’s Fuel Your School program.

Students at HISD’s Booker T. Washington High School are giving three-dimensional form to their imaginings, thanks to a new 3-D printer, a powerful new laptop, and Chevron’s Fuel Your School program, which helped fund the equipment’s purchase.

The students are involved in an exciting challenge to design an extraterrestrial colony on Mars with their contemporaries in England, and the new computer will allow them to Skype more effectively with their peers overseas. The new Afinia 3-D printer will enable them to generate scaled-down models of the buildings and other facilities they plan for the colony.

“Until now, my students have created physical objects by cutting away raw material or using molds to make them,” said Washington High School teacher Dr. Nghia Le. “This takes much time and effort. The 3-D printing technology is a game-changer. They can learn more from their ideas by testing more prototypes if they spend less time to make them.”

The equipment, worth about $3,000, was purchased through Chevron’s Fuel Your School program, which donates up to a million dollars during the month of October to fund eligible classroom projects at public schools. Last year, Chevron helped fund 406 projects in Harris County by partnering with Donors Choose, a non-profit organization dedicated to connecting caring citizens and businesses with schools seeking support.

If you’d like to participate in the Fuel Your School initiative, it’s not too late. Just visit a participating Chevron or Texaco station and purchase eight or more gallons of fuel, and Chevron will contribute one dollar of the cost to supporting schools. For complete details, please visit the Fuel Your School website.