Live From Austin!

« Adios Childhood, Welcome Adolescence | Main | Competition Saturday »

February 26, 2005

Introduce Meg to Engineering Day

The women engineers of the University of Texas sponsored an "Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day" which Meg and I decided to attend.

We had fun roaming around my old stomping grounds on the forty acres, even on this cold, rainy Saturday. There were numerous activities where Meg and the other young girls did hands-on projects. These activities were led by the women UT engineering students who really did a great job of explaining what the activities were about, why they got into engineering, and some of the principles being demonstrated.

We started building Hoop Gliders why we learned about the aeronautical principles behind it's flight.

Then on to the extremely cool Hovercraft made with a balloon blowing air through a hole in the bottom of a disposable plate, to create a near frictionless contact between the plate and table, much like an air hockey table.

We did a quick check of what the 1st-3rd graders were doing a found a room where they were building gumdrop geodesic half domes. Little did we realize at the time what good fortune it was to drop in here...

...since when we went to join the 6th-8th they were having a competition who could build the tallest tower out of newspaper where it had hold a golf ball on top for ten seconds. The room was completely filled with all kinds of designs and strong efforts.

Being fresh from building our toothpick/gumball geodesic half dome, the engineering design became immediately apparent... build the base in this structure and add a bunch of rolled up papers as we build the tower on this strong base.

One of the engineering students came back to check on us and wondered why we were spending so much time on our base... little did she realize we were applying the first engineering principal of stealing a good idea and applying it in a novel way. This design helped us to completely blow away the competition. We pinned that golf ball to the ceiling!

Victory hadn't felt that good since when Bob Rice and I, back in our college days in the very same building, built a complicated electronics project in lab, smoke-tested* it, and had it work the first time... unheard of in those days!

Kudos to Meg's 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Huckabay for forwarding us an email about this event since we probably would not have heard about it otherwise.

*Smoke-testing--the moment all electrical engineers face when they've built their projects, checked everything, said a quiet prayer, and then throw the switch to let the electricity flow, and hope the whole thing doesn't go poof up in smoke.

Posted by Jim at February 26, 2005 5:32 PM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.austincahills.com/mt/mt-tb.cgi/31

The women engineers of the University of Texas sponsored an "Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day" which Meg and I decided to attend. We had fun roaming around my old stomping grounds on the forty acres, even on this cold, rainy Saturday. There were numerous activities where Meg and the other young girls did hands-on projects. These activities were led by the women UT engineering students who really did a great job of explaining what the activities were about, why they got into engineering, and some of the principles being demonstrated.
We started building Hoop Gliders why we learned about the aeronautical principles behind it's flight.
Then on to the extremely cool Hovercraft made with a balloon blowing air through a hole in the bottom of a disposable plate, to create a near frictionless contact between the plate and table, much like an air hockey table. We did a quick check of what the 1st-3rd graders were doing a found a room where they were building gumdrop geodesic half domes. Little did we realize at the time what good fortune it was to drop in here... ...since when we went to join the 6th-8th they were having a competition who could build the tallest tower out of newspaper where it had hold a golf ball on top for ten seconds. The room was completely filled with all kinds of designs and strong efforts. Being fresh from building our toothpick/gumball geodesic half dome, the engineering design became immediately apparent... build the base in this structure and add a bunch of rolled up papers as we build the tower on this strong base. One of the engineering students came back to check on us and wondered why we were spending so much time on our base... little did she realize we were applying the first engineering principal of stealing a good idea and applying it in a novel way. This design helped us to completely blow away the competition. We pinned that golf ball to the ceiling!
Victory hadn't felt that good since when Bob Rice and I, back in our college days in the very same building, built a complicated electronics project in lab, smoke-tested* it, and had it work the first time... unheard of in those days! Kudos to Meg's 4th grade teacher, Mrs. Huckabay for forwarding us an email about this event since we probably would not have heard about it otherwise. *Smoke-testing--the moment all electrical engineers face when they've built their projects, checked everything, said a quiet prayer, and then throw the switch to let the electricity flow, and hope the whole thing doesn't go poof up in smoke.