When second-grader Maddy Breaux saw her rocket blast off, soaring nearly twice her height, her reaction was priceless.

This reaction is exactly what the Society of Women Engineers was hoping for Saturday at Hawkins United Methodist Church.

Society of Women Engineers member Lulu Edwards said all Girl Scouts from Warren County and one troop from Clinton attended the 10th annual engineering workshop.

“The Society of Women Engineers does this every year, and it’s for Girl Scouts from kindergarten to high school,” she said. “The high schoolers actually help us, but everybody else has an activity they do.”

The different troops rotate through five different activities, learning about chemistry, physics and other aspects of engineering. At the end, the girls participated in a competition creating a tennis ball tower, Edwards said.

“We do this to give girls a taste of what engineering is like,” she said. “This is to show them it is fun and can be exciting.”

Edwards said since they are the Society of Women Engineers, they feel it’s important to reach out to the young females. About 15 volunteers put on the event for 48 Girl Scouts.

Society of Women Engineers president Katy Breaux said a group of middle school girls were tasked with creating roller coasters with the most loops.

“They went through design phase and gave us their list of materials,” she said. “They’re trying to do this while using the least about amount of materials possible.”

“The girls love it,” said Melissa Trcka, leader of Troop 5629 from St. Francis Xavier Elementary School. “This is an awesome experience.”

This was Trcka and her daughter Olivia’s first year to attend the program.

“I believe our girls are learning a lot from these women engineers,” she said. “I hope they see they can grow up and be anything they want to be.”

Trcka said her favorite station was the lava lamp.

“The lava lamp is a soda bottle that has water and vegetable oil in it,” she said. “They drop food coloring and it falls like a glob to the bottom, and they add alka seltzer to it, which makes colorful bubbles.”

St. Francis third-grader Ali Grace Luke, 9, said she’s been going to the program for years and she was excited to come back.

“We got the container and then we got to decorate it,” she said of her favorite activity, the rockets.

Luke said the program has made her think more about what engineers do in their jobs, and may consider it as a career in the future.