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Thomas Edison Would Applaud Women in Engineering [FemGineers]!

As middle and high schools implement the integrated subject teaching paradigm known as STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Math], it is natural that increasing amounts of female students would become more interested in what engineers do, and how they solve problems. This head and hands approach to solving problem has shown young women to be quite adept at designing and building activities. Young ladies with a keen interest in taking these courses in school and also participating in after-school classes and design competitions are informally known as “FemGineers”. Here is a New Jersey story about these amazing young ladies.

The first educational program in the nation to offer a formal woman’s oriented engineering and design curriculum was launched 10 years ago at High Point Regional High School in Sussex, NJ. As part of their technology education program, this activity remains vibrant, with many of its former students continuing their technical studies in college and/or having found employment in science and technology related careers.

In 2008, the Heritage Middle School in Livingston, NJ also started a FemGineers program. Starting with just 10 students, this effort has grown to 35 students this year. The original students have now gone on to Livingston High School and established another FemGineers program at that school, with some of the students even coming back to mentor the middle school students! The plan is to grow the Livingston School District FemGineers program to 100 students by 2014. You can see the FemGineers in action below as they participated in a statewide competition to design new cities. Later, the young ladies also competed in the Edison Innovation Foundation’s Thomas Edison Invention Challenge for unique applications for alternate energy. They won awards in both competitions.

FemGineers First Design Their New City Model to Scale

Building the Scale Model

Presenting to an Engineer-Judge at Statewide Competition

Proud of their Work!

The main goal of the program is to empower young women to pursue interests in fields that are traditionally dominated by men. The FemGineer concept, when introduced at the middle school level, provides the young ladies with a “social fit.” They are accepted by their peers in the group and are not afraid of being judged. This transfers to the high school as these girls enroll in courses that have been traditionally dominated by their male peers. The program provides structure and the confidence needed for young women to eventually pursue careers in STEM related fields.

All this is music to the ears of engineering colleges, who for years have been trying to interest young women in becoming full- fledged engineers. Women have already made some significant inroads into engineering, but the profession can use many more; and introductory engineering programs in the middle and high schools can be a terrific way to spread the interest and fun of engineering.

By the way, tiny New Jersey was one of the first states to adopt a technology education curriculum back in 1986, leading to an international revolution in teaching students about the engineered world. This little state is ranked 4^th among all states in the total number of inventions awarded to its many scientists, engineers, technologists, and inventors. And of course it is home to the greatest inventor in the world, Thomas Edison. Were he here today, no doubt he would be a supporter of this kind of head and hands, practical method of education. In his time, he made many comments about the state of education and the need for more focused methods of showing how school relates to work. How pleased he would be to see the FemGineers in action!

Editor’s Deep Dive

Thomas Edison on Time Magazine

http://thealternativepress.com/articles/heritage-middle-schools-femgineers-compete-in-fu
http://www.teachertube.com/viewVideo.php?video_id=216497 [middle school girls designing and building models for the cities of the future!]
http://livingston.patch.com/articles/we-built-this-city

“To have a great idea, have a lot of them.”

Time ® is a registered trademark of Time Inc.

Electric Vehicles + Solar Power Make Thomas Edison Smile

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Many energy experts agree that for electric vehicles [EVs] to make faster inroads into reducing the use of foreign oil for traditional gasoline powered cars, there needs to be an infrastructure that will allow for charging EVs while they are parked. Stations located near shopping centers, places of work, and well-traveled areas would be ideal. Imagine driving to work and plugging your EV in at a convenient parking spot, assured you can make it home easily that evening; but wouldn’t it be even way more energy cool to charge your EV using electricity from the sun?

At Dell’s headquarters in Round Rock, Texas, a new shaded 50 car solar parking structure called the Solar Grove can re-charge EVs. The structure was built by Envision Solar, and fully operational should help avoid about 145,000 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions per year. Check it out here and in the photo below.

Dell’s Parking Lot for Solar Charging of EVs

Recently, Bethesda MD implemented a new solar charging station (see photo below), the sixth such facility now operational in Montgomery County. Able to charge two vehicles at a time, this 1,410-watt facility uses a sun-tracking solar array. The system is manufactured by Advanced Technology & Research Corp. (ATR). The charging station would allow drivers of electric vehicles to pull up, swipe a plastic card and plug in their vehicles to be charged. Rob Lundahl, vice president, automation systems for ATR, said an hour of charging will yield roughly 20 miles of travel time for most vehicles. The cost for the system, according to Lundahl, is in the $20,000 range.

Solar Charging Station In Bethesda, MD

Take a look below at what Honda is trying in three cities in Japan to premier its solar charging stations for EVs. The program isn’t just for electric vehicles, but also plug-in hybrid vehicles, electric scooters, and electric carts. Honda will monitor how effective the charging station is at generating electricity, and ways to improve the convenience and usability of the charging station for customers.

Honda Solar Charging Station in Japan

Of course, you also can install your own solar charging station on the roof of your house or garage and charge your car when the sun is out as well! What would Thomas Edison, famed EV pioneer and storage battery developer, have thought of this? Well, here is his famous early 1900s quote about alternate technologies – “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power. I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that. I wish I had more years left.”

That settles it!

EDITOR’S DEEP DIVE

“The thing with which I lose patience most is the clock. It’s hands move too fast.

Time ® is a registered trademark of Time Inc.

What Characterizes Inventors Like Edison?

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Companies and educators try to define creativity and inventiveness. Business gurus and motivational speakers earn lucrative fees by likening it to a series of traits that can be easily identified and exploited. They know that, like Edison, inventors are agents of change and great economic growth; moving the world in new directions, creating wealth and new infrastructure. They are the ones who shift the paradigms, causing earthquakes in the fabric of civilization.

Consider these characteristics of inventors [not in any rank/priority order]:

Not easily shaken by detractors—persistent in their work
Passionate about what they do
Willing to go against accepted thinking
Visionary and intuitive
Quantitative and analytical—facile with math
Not afraid of risk
Tolerant of ambiguity
Well developed sense of humor
Know how to unleash own creative spirit
Not afraid of failure—willing to learn from it
Can see the creative links to the arts
Focused on the future
See the whole problem and key parts simultaneously
Can sell their ideas to others
Builds teams with multi-disciplinary skills to accomplish goals
Document and protect inventive work
Solve problems from a multi-dimensional viewpoint.

Edison had his own defining characteristics, but those enumerated above tend to capture most of them. For the great inventor, it was largely the thrill of running to ground the problem at hand, to do something useful for mankind, and to constantly learn new things. These motivations fascinated the man throughout his incredibly productive 84-year life; and probably accounted for why, no matter what field he decided to work in, he was a success – and radically changed that field.

Edison was a man in love with new ideas, someone who never seemed to lose that natural awe we have in childhood. Many of the great scientists who changed the world of physics and chemistry loved to “play” with ideas too-retaining that natural awe of the world. Edison was a man in continual re-birth. What a potion this would make for education at all levels today. Actually, educators are re-discovering the Edison magic, urging kids to think out of the box, like Old Tom did; and to use the STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math] techniques he pioneered at his legendary West Orange Labs. Edison….ever relevant…ever inspirational.

Editor’s Deep Dive

Thomas Edison on Time Magazine

“I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others… I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent…. “

Time ® is a registered trademark of Time Inc.

The Changing of the Thomas Edison Light

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The classic Thomas Edison’s light bulb design has changed relatively little over the past 130 years, a testament to aesthetics and tradition. The design has also come to signify the genius of a new idea…the lighting up of something brand new. Now with the mandated use of compact fluorescent light bulbs, what is the message here?

The compact fluorescent light bulb (CFL) was invented in response to the 1973 oil crisis. Though these light bulbs have been around for some time, it’s only in recent years that they have caught on as America and the rest of the world seek to become energy efficient and independent. CFL’s consume significantly less energy and last about eight times as long as the traditional incandescent light bulbs. To encourage the use of these more energy efficient bulbs, international governments have banned or scheduled phase outs of the Edison style light bulb. Many European countries began the phase out in 2009, and the US is set to phase out in 2012.

Edison, who ushered the world into the energy age, was no stranger to energy efficiency and energy independence. Indeed, from a conversation with friends Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone comes this Thomas Edison quote. “We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide.” He always searched for ways to make his inventions more efficient, especially his new electric power stations, squeezing as much energy as possible out of his coal fuel.Edison’s electric vehicle was conceptualized for the same reasons too. For a man of his time, Edison was surprisingly forward thinking when it came to energy efficiency.

All in all, Thomas Edison would approve of this new technology using electronically generated light, and if alive today, he would be in there with the competition, coming up with his own lighting innovations. However, the classic light bulb shape will not go quietly. We are seeing compact fluorescent bulbs and LEDs encased in the classic rounded bulb shape—perhaps a compromise to the strong visual and dare we say emotional [visceral] attachment the rounded bulb image has inculcated in the psyche of billions of people worldwide. We strongly associate electricity with the very form of the light bulb itself.

LEFT: Edison Fluorescent Lamp - Patent No. 865,367 RIGHT: Original Edison Incandescent Bulb

Just for the record, Edison did dabble in florescent lighting in the late 1890s, receiving a patent in 1907. The really fascinating aspect of his invention was he used X-rays as the excitation technique. While this invention was never commercialized, it demonstrates his ability to conceive of applications from new scientific areas of study. X-rays were accidentally discovered in 1895 by Wilhelm Conrad Roentgen. Edison filed his patent on X-ray based fluorescent lights in 1896, using a unique tungstate of calcium or strontium [tungsten compound coatings] as his fluorescing or light giving materials.

Editor’s Deep Dive