On-Line Science Games

Check out this site to find some links to fun games. Play one or two yourself and then have your kids see if they can beat your score.

I tried the “Extreme Adventure” link on this site. The one I did teaches about levers and then has you use what you learned to do some kayaking. I did not kayak well. There was also rock climbing, mountain skiing, etc.

See what you and your kids can do!

Happy Engineer’s Week!

This year, Engineer’s Week is celebrated February 14th-21st. I am going to be trying to post a few links each day to information or activites related to E-Week.

Today, let’s just go with an intro to the main E-Week site:

http://www.eweek.org/EngineersWeek/EngineersWeek.aspx

You can learn more about types of engineering with your kids:

http://www.eweek.org/AboutEngineering/TypesEngineering.aspx

There are a few activities to do with all ages:

http://www.eweek.org/EngineersWeek/DiscoverE.aspx?ContentID=123

or

http://www.eweek.org/EngineersWeek/DiscoverE.aspx?ContentID=182

and

http://www.eweek.org/EngineersWeek/DiscoverE.aspx?ContentID=91

Pick one or two to do this week with your kids.

School for Me

As part of keeping up my Professional Engineer’s license, I have to complete a certain number of professional development hours (PDH) each year (or licensing cycle). Accordingly, I jumped at the chance for a relatively inexpensive eight-hour educational class this month sponsored by one of the engineering organizations of which I am a member.

What was originally going to be a smaller group turned into over eighty people by the day of the event. I didn’t do my own homework on how long it would take me to get from my sleeping location the night before to the location of the class. Instead, I relied on someone else’s word. (BIG MISTAKE.) They indicated it would take 22 minutes, but to allow 30 for the trip. I was planning on leaving 45 minutes early, but ended up leaving ten minutes after my ETD (estimated time of departure). While I missed the huge traffic tie-up, I didn’t take the shortest alternate route and arrived at the campus five minutes late. I am kicking myself for being such a neo-Luddite and not owning a GPS unit of some sort. I couldn’t find the darn building where the class was being held! Fifteen minutes and 2 1/2 times around the campus later (and a stop to ask for directions, which were the same as I had originally received), I finally found the proper building. I was the last person to arrive and occupied the last chair – in the back – in an aisle. (I found out that others also had trouble finding the building, but they had planned better and were not as late as I.) On a side note, I timed my trip back through virtually no traffic and it took 32 minutes. So, the information I was given was faulty and I will check myself next time rather than rely on someone else.

I learned quite a bit, met some interesting people, and even interacted with an engineer whose wife homeschools their children. On one name tag, I recognized the name of a co-worker of my husband’s, so I took the risk that it wasn’t a like-named individual and introduced myself. He started out by not seeming to know who my husband was, even though they work together often. Then, he wasn’t interested in small talk, so I excused myself rather quickly.

My husband has since run into this individual and he admitted he was in a state of shock when we met me. He had “no idea” that I was an engineer, to say nothing of the fact that I had my P.E. license. He was apparently tongue-tied by this revelation.

I had to laugh. Most people who live around here who find out that I’m an engineer presume I work at my husband’s workplace. They are shocked to find out that I mostly stay at home and take care of children. (I do around two-to-three small “freelance” jobs a year.)

I need a few more PDHs by the end of the year, so my “school days” aren’t over yet.

What You Get When Two Engineers Get Together

My spouse and I were coordinating on the installation of a new purchase in our house. He had decided where he wanted it (upstairs) and I knew where it belonged (downstairs). When we finally had it in the house, we both re-evaluated our plans because of how heavy the darn thing was.

Like the engineers we are, we calculated the load weight, determined the pounds per square foot, switched that number to pounds per square inch and hit our bookcases looking for information on what the different materials in our house could handle. Each with a different book in hand, we both came up with similar answers (it wasn’t even close to the limit of what our floors could handle). We could put it anywhere we wanted.

Side note: I considered emailing MoreThanAnElectrician for a “real” answer, but decided we had plenty of safety factor from our “book” answers. He can tell you about all the mistakes he has to clean up from those darned “book-learned” engineers without enough real life experience. Let us hope we don’t become one of those stories.

So, we continued the installation . . . upstairs.