Women Who Engineer History

Hi everyone! I’m Clotilda BeGood,  Cornelius’ cousin. This week is National Engineering Week so the folks at the Arkansas Discovery Network asked me to introduce some exemplary women in the world of engineering.

First I thought I’d explain a bit about what engineering is. It is such an incredibly broad field and involves taking concepts from math and science to create things – anything from a new package for your gum to wind turbines. Engineering is a huge field, encompassing a wide range of industries. You may not even realize an engineer has been to work, because most of their work is behind the scenes.

Buechley's shirt lights up!

Some very interesting women have made a career out of engineering. One of them, Leah Buechley, is featured in the Network’s exhibit, Science & Art. She blends her knowledge of electronics, programming and sewing to engineer e-textiles that blink, flash and buzz. (check out her shirt with blinking lights!) You can learn more about Leah Buechley next week in a “Meet the Artists” blog post, or at http://hlt.media.mit.edu/:.

Next up is Yvonne Brill. She is an Aerospace Consultant (how cool would that be?!). She began her career in 1945, as a rocket propellant chemist on a project to design and launch an unmanned, Earth-orbiting satellite. Later, she developed the concept for a new rocket engine — an electrothermal hydrazine thruster. She was the only woman of technology at the time working in rocket propulsion systems. She has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and a master’s in chemistry, so if you enjoy either of those subjects, and are intrigued with space travel, you may be able to follow in her footsteps. Watch this video and hear Brill’s overview of part of her unique and fascinating career.

 

Heidi Koschwanez, Biomedical Engineer

Biomedical Engineer Heidi Koschwanez designs experiments to solve a real-life medical problem – how to prevent the body from rejecting glucose sensors so they can last in the body longer than a few days. Glucose sensors are little machines that figure out how much sugar (also called glucose) is in your blood.  People with diabetes need to check what their blood sugar is often (3-4 times a day) so they don’t get sick.  These little sensors help make checking their blood sugar easy. Find out more about her and other great women engineers at www.engineeringgirl.org!I hope you enjoy reading about these and other women in engineering. I’ll come back again to talk to you more about me and what great fun engineering can be.

Be an engineer and design your own roller coaster!

To help celebrate National Engineering Week (Feb 20 – 26), we wanted to share this exhilarating engineering activity you can do at home, (provided by Casey Wiley, volunteer coordinator at Mid-America Science Museum)!

Do you like roller coasters?

I’ll admit that I’m a huge chicken and refuse to ride one, but I do love to watch them fly through the sky! Did you ever wonder how they work?

Make Your Own Roller Coaster!

The cool thing about science is it’s all around us and touches our lives in so many ways. Scientists aren’t just boring people in lab coats trapped in stinky laboratories. Engineers use physics, math and creativity to design our world, even cool stuff like roller coasters!

Here’s your chance to be an engineer and design your own dream roller coaster! Try to make it fast, fun and exciting, but don’t lose your marbles (I mean, your passengers)!

Try to make it fast, fun and exciting, but don’t loose your marbles!

Materials:

• 5-7 six-foot lengths of foam pipe insulation tubing cut in half lengthwise
• Round toothpicks (approx. 20)
• 16mm marbles (5)
• Container to catch the marbles
• Flexible tape measurer

What to Do

1. Design and test a preliminary prototype using one marble, a container to catch the marble, one foam piece, one toothpick and a one-foot piece of masking tape
2. As you test, try to think about your final design and the amount of materials that will be needed.
3. After 5 minutes, take what you learned from the preliminary prototypes and get the rest of the materials you need.
4. Construct your roller coaster! Try to answer the following questions as you test and design your ride!

Why do roller coasters have corkscrew turns instead of loop-de-loops?

Questions

1. Can you make your roller coaster stand alone?
2. Was there a stronger design/construction that seemed to work?
3. What did you have to change to keep the marble form falling out?
4. Is the ride safe?
5. Why do roller coasters have corkscrew turns instead of loop-de-loops?
6. How far did your marble travel?
7. What happened when you changed the loop?
8. What other modifications did you do to make your marble travel farther?

What’s happening?
Engineers use their math and science know-how in all areas of an amusement park. They need to understand how to make rides fast and fun, without compromising structural integrity which is needed for ride safety.

Watch this video about building the roller coasters you see at amusement parks!

Hug an Engineer — They Make the World Go ‘Round! Well, not really the world… but you get the idea.

February 20 – 26 is National Engineering Week. If you have an engineer (or two) in your life, hug them. They do important work, like designing my spaceship to travel the universe in search of fresh sources of Nostradimum. Without engineers, I would just have to satisfy myself with taking over the world, but now I can dream much bigger — I’m going to take over the universe!!!

Yeah, um, so… something more applicable to you guys stuck here on Earth: they design roller coasters, skateparks, faster engines, alternative forms of energy (like those windmills you see popping up all around), nanotechnology, clothing that takes your temperature, even improvements in the medical field. The design and problem-solving skills utilized in engineering combines with almost every field you can imagine to make things run faster, work better, safer, more efficiently, and often times, make the things you do everyday for fun even more fun.

For example, take a look at this video that talks about the science of skateboarding, which involves — what else — engineering!

Click on the youtube link if you want to see more of his videos!

Introducing my cousin, Clotilda BeGood!

Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day 2011 is Thursday, February 24th. So, next week, we have an extra-special guest blogger, my very own cousin, Clotilda BeGood. She is quite attractive, so I thought I’d share a photo of her with you today.

I keep telling her she should use my hair gel to make her hair pink, orange, or blue, but she refuses. Something about the way I got the main ingredient, Nostradimium, by pillaging planets and destroying worlds across the universe.

Anyhoo, Clotilda is a girl, and she is an engineer, so she is the perfect choice to introduce girls to engineering! She’s going to talk about some female engineers that are making it big, and having fun at the same time!

So stay tuned and come back next week! We’ll show you how to make your own model roller coaster, introduce some careers you may have never thought of, and, of course, share some more pictures of ME!