Empowering Women in Engineering
Last spring, I began a project to encourage more women to consider engineering. Currently, only 8-17% of mechanical engineers are female. When I was in high school and exploring different majors, I never considered engineering. I was told that if you love math, you should be an engineer, and the truth was that it wasn't my favorite subject. I considered many options in the medical field, like being a doctor or a pharmacist, but didn't find engineering until a semester into college. Only after realizing that engineering is so much more than math did I truly learn to love it.
I did not want another woman to say, "I can't do engineering because I don't like math," so I began a series of videos on YouTube explaining how engineering is more than what meets the eye.
Why do hot dogs always split lengthwise?
In the video above called "Who is Debbie Sterling," I told the story of Debbie Sterling, a Mechanical Engineer who developed GoldieBlox, a toy for young girls to develop spacial skills and an interest in engineering. She created the toy Goldie Blox and the Spinning Machine that has a series of belts and wheels spinning on an axle demonstrating basic engineering principles in a fun toy designed to meet the interests of girls.
In my video to the left titled "Why do hot dogs always split lengthwise?"I model mozzarella sticks and hot dogs to be pressure vessels and explain hoop and longitudinal stress.
My favorite video to make was "The Engineering Behind Your Latte." In the video, I explain how boilers, pumps, and heat exchangers, typical to engineering, are used to brew lattes at coffee shops. In researching for this video, I learned about rotary vane pumps and vibratory pumps that later became a topic during my internship this summer.
Other videos I made during this series included the chemical reaction of bath bombs, the science behind climate change, and how to handle stress in college from an engineering student.
This series helped me develop my communication skills by taking complex engineering concepts and explaining it to the target audience of young women exploring different career options and, hopefully, choosing engineering just like I did.