What do baking soda, a pipette, play doh and a hair dryer have in common? They were all key components in our first ever Design Your World: At Home Edition held via Zoom on Sunday, October 25th. The event kicked off with our guest speaker, Haley Barnes, sharing a little about her career starting in engineering and moving on to pharmacy school. She also shared the importance of the work engineers do – especially in these crazy times with COVID-19 and the wildfires. There was also a fashion show of photos of women engineers at work.
The students that attended were able to create their own lava lamp learning about density, diffusion and how those concepts were present in their lamps. There was great problem solving in substituting a different tool for the pipette – a spoon & straw! The second activity was the hurricane challenge – simulating a structure withstanding a hurricane. We had 3 volunteers executing while the students were able to pick how the structure was built. The decision points were the number of contact points, what shape of bracing and what shape roof. The students were able to see how the different factors influenced how long the structure remained standing with the hurricane winds.
We thank all the attendees and volunteers for participating in this first ever event! It was a huge success and we look forward to our second virtual Design Your World: Coding Edition coming soon on December 5th. Stay tuned in to Dallas SWE for more details.
