My Story
From a young age I was very interested in STEM related fields. I remember climbing trees and wondering about the unique fractal shape of their branches and leaves. I began programming in middle school, and I loved to compete in hackathons. In 6th grade I built a Scratch game, and later I designed apps in MIT App Inventor during the Brain Hackers Game Jam, winning awards for the most entertaining and innovative games. I discovered that I love the feeling of completing a challenging project, and I wanted to share it with other people. During my years in middle school, my interests in STEM and computer science math grew. In high school I took challenging math and science classes, and learned Java in my computer science class. My skills and passion evolved when I participated in interesting programming competitions such as the USA Computing Olympiad. Now I realize I would not have been as excited or prepared to take these interesting classes without first being introduced to programming in middle school. My goal is to inspire my peers and students in my community to become curious and develop their interests in STEM, physics, and programming.
My Project
My project is an after-school club that will introduce the middle school girls in my community to Mechanical, Environmental, Aeronautical, and Civil Engineering. They will learn about the planning and design process needed to implement successful engineering projects. The main goal is to inspire the girls to pursue STEM through fun engineering projects, and to develop their problem-solving, creativity, and critical thinking skills.
The first project is designing a spaghetti bridge that can hold the most weight. The girls will first learn about different types of bridges and in what conditions those bridges are commonly used in, and then will sketch their own design before they start building. They will have constraints on the amount of materials they can use, simulating real life engineering projects. The second project is a landfill project where they will build a miniature landfill to understand the constraints associated with building a landfill, the challenges it poses to the neighboring towns, and the best methods to prevent pollution. The next project is an airplane project, where the girls will build their own Styrofoam plane model, and then share the test data with the rest of their group. This way, the girls can compare how the aspect ratio of the wing impacts the plane’s flight, speed, and accuracy, and also build their experience of working with a team. The final project is a Rube Goldberg project which will introduce the girls to physics concepts such as forces, momentum, and energy transfer.
I think the girls will have fun working on the engineering projects, and will learn what it takes to successfully design and implement a project. I hope the girls will be excited and inspired to pursue challenging math and science classes, and further develop their interests in STEM.