Elementary Engineering

One of the things I get to do is participate in career days at local schools. I get really excited about the opportunity to share my passion for this field, and to expose young minds to this creative side of engineering. <nerd alert!>

Last week, I was invited to speak at an elementary school career day and tell them all about electrical engineering. Then I was told to plan a hands-on activity.

Wait, what?

I'm supposed to entertain a bunch of fourth-graders by talking about...math? Science? Electricity?

Yeah. Right.

Time to get creative, people.

So, I put together a slideshow with a ton of photos of "cool" projects. These mostly consist of images of high-end restaurants, buildings at sports stadiums and college workout facilities. (Because really, what 10-year-old wants to look at a picture of a panelboard or transformer?)

Then I got a couple of those clamp lights from Home Depot and put a very warm white (2700K) incandescent lamp in one, and a very cool white (5000K) LED lamp in the other. I grabbed a bunch of paint chips and a few very colorful scarves, a set of drawings and went on my way. I felt like I was decently prepared to entertain children that morning.

That is, until the firetruck showed up.

Seriously?

Why are there always firefighters at career day? They make everyone else look bad.

Moving on.

Let me tell you, there is no way I could have been prepared for the day that lay ahead of me. I knew teachers were a special breed, but man, I barely lasted 3 hours!

We covered the important things about my job: where I work, what I do every day and how all of those things in a building that need electricity need somebody to design them. We talked about lighting and how it affects the colors of things and how it affects your eyes. They played with the lights and ooohed and aahhhed when the scarves "changed colors" under the different lamps. We flipped through the photos over and over, to a chorus of "Hey, I've been there!" and "One time, my dad took me to that place. They have cotton candy."

And then...we opened up the floor for questions.

"Have you ever been electrocuted?"

"Do birds have to wear shoes when they sit on the power lines? How come they don't catch on fire?"

"One time, I saw a squirrel blow up. His guts came out."

"How much money do you make? Are you rich?"

"Can I have your scarf?"

So, things got derailed a bit. But all in all, I think a few of them learned a thing or two. I think some of them got excited about the idea of designing things that people actually live in and experience.

But mostly, they just wanted to wear my hard hat.