Girls in Engineering, Expo this Saturday

This week is Engineering Week. It's celebrated across the US to encourage more kids to explore the world of engineering as a career path. And this year the awareness-type week in Maine has targeted 4H girls (and Girl Scouts) to teach them about engineering careers because less than 10 percent of US engineers are women.

My girls' trip to campus with their fellow female 4Hers (Girl Scouts were invited another day this week) included an in-depth look at the impact that engineering has on the world around them. This program was all about practical application as the girls explored mechanical, electrical, chemical and biomedical engineering.
They spent time in the lab learning about the mechanics of structures by creating a miniature building support column (which was made with paper, scissors and tape) and testing their designs.

OK, this is where I got a bit lost but the testing machine measures newtons to determine the "gravitational constant" (I think). So my takeaway was that this was how the column's stability under pressure is figured out.

The girls then had a fascinating (truly!) chat in the biomedical engineering lab with a lab researcher at the University about microscopic nanoparticles. This research is creating molecular cancer probes as a way to detect pancreatic cancer. The girls were able to do some hands-on chemistry to make the gold nanoparticles used in this research and then view them under a microscope to see the illumination of these particles to understand how they work.

The accuracy, and less invasive way, of detecting cancer cells in the pancreas and removing only those cells during surgery more efficiently (i.e., shorter surgery time, which is key for survival rates for pancreatic cancer patients we were told) is an utterly fascinating field of study. (Can you tell I learned a lot at this program too?)

After the biomedical lab experiments, the girls moved on to more chemical engineering work. Even though I think every girl in our group had made slime before, seeing a chart with its chemical properties and explanation of the reaction allowed them to feel more mature while enjoying the process of making it again.

I don't care what the teens say, they still like making messes and having fun with slime. The tour of the paper making machines was also interesting (although a bit noisy so I missed some of the explanation on how they work).

The girls also made a stop in the robotic manipulation lab for a game of chess with a robot and had a chance to see a variety of computer engineering projects being made at the University.

This engineering program at UMaine was specifically geared for girls in 4H and Girl Scouts but this Saturday's Engineer's Expo at USM's Gorham campus is open to everyone!

My girls have been to the Engineer's Expo a couple of times and even though some of the concepts were unfamiliar - L.'s commentary about "a thing-a-ma-bob that has to do with something" was amusing one year - they always leave thinking math and science is fun. There are a lot of hands-on experiments to make the basic engineering concepts easy to understand for kids of all ages.

And really, it's a well-done, inexpensive and educational event (there's a suggested donation of $2 because there are so many freebies given to the kids to take home).

Photos from the 2007 ExpoEvent details about this year's Engineer's Expo

I'm not sure my girls are convinced they want to become engineers but L.'s got a hankering for "building computer stuff" (she was really taken with the chess-playing robot and computer light show demonstration) so I'm hoping to steer her in that direction to see if it's something she'd like to do.

Because my other take-away from these engineering programs? Financial security is really darn good in this field.