Lab volunteers engineer visits to local schools
This week, many Lab engineers took to the roads to visit elementary schools in Livermore, Danville and Tracy. Their mission: to celebrate National Engineers Week with 4th and 5th graders.
Aaron Wemhoff, a thermal-fluids engineer in the Engineering Technologies Division, helped organize the troupe of presenters who hoped to spread the word about careers and opportunities in engineering and encourage young students to study math and science. In addition, volunteers were armed with challenging activities to conduct with each class.
At Tracy's South West Park School, Wemhoff spoke to fifth graders. He first explained his career as a Lab engineer. Then, he asked the students to name anything in the classroom, other than a person. One student answered enthusiastically, "the window," to which Wemhoff replied, "Yes, a window was either designed or built by an engineer," helping them better understand that engineers create things and solve problems.
He then asked the class to work in teams to name the top 20 engineering achievements or inventions of the past century. This task took a lot of thought, but most came up with winning answers like electricity, refrigerators, cell phones, the laser, medical devices and air conditioning.
Finally, Wemhoff positioned small groups of students in the front of the classroom to demonstrate the principals of compression and tension used in such engineering feats as the Golden Gate Bridge and the St. Louis Gateway Arch.
In a neighboring classroom, Kim Christensen, an engineer in NIF and Laura Tully, an electrical engineer, led a 'weighty' lesson. They instructed students to work in teams to build a structure on their desks using only index cards and tape that could sustain a heavy history text book. Groups cheered when the book was evenly balanced but groaned with disappointment when the cards and book toppled.
After, Tully asked the students investigative questions: Did they consider different shapes for the cards? What did they learn?
When asked why he volunteered to celebrate Engineering Week with students, Christensen said: "I think it is important to tell them about the 'invisible occupation' — engineering. Nearly everyone knows about other professions, yet many are unaware of what engineers do."
Lab engineers who volunteered during National Engineers Week at schools in Tracy, Livermore and Danville in addition to Wemhoff, Tully and Christensen included: Brent McHale, Eric Crull, Ken Skulina, Jayne Tonowski, Steve Willson, Owen Alford, Ryan Krone, Mary Stuart, JB McLeod, Sejin Oh, Faith Davis, Randy Pico, Alan Ragsdale, Simon Cohen, Wayne Miller, Tiziana Bomd, Elizabeth Wheeler, William Clark, Bill DeHope, Peter Zischka and Daniel Guzman.
Science on Saturday turnout is out of this world
The Science on Saturday (SOS) lecture series completed its second week, Feb. 16, with "Our Dark and Messy Universe: How One Particle Might Light the Way," presented by Steve Asztalos of LLNL and Tom Shefler, Granada High School teacher. Attendance at both sessions reached new heights with more than 950 students, parents and teachers. This represents the largest SOS audience yet at the Bankhead Theater. The next lecture will highlight the National Ignition Facility (NIF) on Feb. 23.
Next lecture highlights NIF and our energy future
"From the Sun to the Sun: The Story on the National Ignition Facility and our Energy Future," by Principal Associate Director of NIF and Photon Science Edward Moses, and Dan Burns, a Los Gatos High School teacher, is the third lecture in the Science on Saturday series on Feb. 23 at the Bankhead Theater, 2400 First St., Livermore. Two presentations will be offered — 9:30 and 11:15 a.m. This lecture will describe how NIF works and its potential to provide a limitless supply of clean, safe energy. Admission is free. Teachers and students are encouraged to arrive 30 minutes early to guarantee a seat.
Livermore high school graduates eligible for scholarship
The Mario Pedrozzi Education Scholarship Foundation was established in 2006. Each year scholarships in the hundreds of thousands of dollars are awarded to the most deserving graduates of Livermore high schools in pursuit of higher education, and to the graduates of Alameda County high schools attending St. Patrick's Seminary and University in Menlo Park.
These scholarships are available to eligible students of all ages whose higher education goals may range from a technical and vocational certification to an upper graduate degree.
For more information about the scholarships and the foundation, go to the Pedrozzi Foundation Website.
