SWE K-12 Outreach: Girl in Engineering Day
Where: The Pit, Cullen College of Engineering Building 1
When: November 7, 2014
Girl in Engineering Day is one of the major outreach events organized by SWE Chapter at University of Houston. The middle school girls were given hands on training conducting some very interesting science experiments that lay the foundation of very impactful engineering technologies. We had several workshops in Mechanical, Chemical and Electrical Engineering working with circuits, chromatography and buoyancy.
I conducted one of the Mechanical Engineering workshops : Technology of the Deep, Experimenting with buoyant forces. The force of buoyancy gives rise to the working of submarines that are used for underwater operations and for transporting petroleum. The hot air balloons, which is the oldest human carrying flight technology is also based on the based on buoyancy; it rises because it is filled with lighter air. Experiments were conducted using soft drink cans, normal and salty water and balloons to explain the concept of buoyant forces and densities and how do they work to make such wonderful technologies possible. The girls were really excited and appreciated the hand on experiments. I am looking forward to our second outreach event: “Launch into Engineering” in January, 2015.