Celebrating Engineers Week at SciFest: Engineering Expo

It was hard to miss the energy and excitement around engineering when guests of the Science Center celebrated Engineers Week at SciFest: Engineering Expo on Saturday, February 26.

Showcasing engineers and the creativity that engineering is all about, more than 200 partners and presenters gathered at the Science Center to give guests a closer look at how the inventiveness, creative thinking, and problem solving at the heart of the engineering process are more relevant to our daily lives than we might sometimes realize.

For more than 13 years SciFest events have served as an important part of the Science Center’s mission to ignite and sustain lifelong science and technology learning by providing the St. Louis community with a chance to not just experience a STEAM—science, technology, engineering, the arts, and math—topic like engineering, but also get immersed in it. And this year’s Engineering Expo delivered.

Across each floor of the Science Center and at the McDonnell Planetarium, SciFest: Engineering Expo offered science demonstrations, hands-on activities, presentations, and opportunities to meet real life professionals working in the field of engineering. In total, more than 3,000 people attended the free, all-day event, where they had the opportunity to find inspiration for applying their own creative abilities in the engineering corner of the world of STEAM while meeting and learning from real engineers who build, invent, and impact the world around us.

Throughout the day, Energy Stage hosted presentations on a wide-ranging assortment of engineering-related topics.

Starting off with a special Science Story Time for young learners, the Science Center’s Early Childhood team read Rosie Revere, Engineer by author Andrea Beaty. Afterward, presenters like Marco Cavaglia, Professor of Physics at Missouri University of Science & Technology, spoke about black holes and how technology allows scientists to study them; Chico Weber from Squarefruit Labs talked about “Growth Chambers and Climate Change” to take a look at the devices that help plants grow while reducing carbon emissions; and Nick Wnuk, Senior Technology Designer at IMEG Engineering, talked about how engineers design, invent, create, and solve problems to help people.

At activity tables through the Science Center campus, STEAM partners like Washington University’s Lew Lab demonstrated how technology allows scientists to see molecules in cells and other “invisible” objects. Out in the GROW Pavilion, Bayer Crop Science demonstrated how to build and race a “brushbot” (a simple robot powered by a small vibrating motor) and debuted a custom 3D-printed tabletop cotton gin.

The Boeing Corporation was also on hand to let guests experience flight simulators and other aviation activities. Guests were able to take part in a virtual reality flight experience and design and construct light-up paper airplanes that they could then take home.

One important aspect of events like SciFest is allowing people from communities typically under-represented in STEAM fields a chance to see themselves in science by seeing, hearing from, and meeting real professionals who look like them.

This year, Engineering Expo was excited to have a number of groups and STEAM professionals representing the diversity of the engineering community. The Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers offered building and engineering activities, and the Gateway Metro Professional Chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers demonstrated to guests of all ages how circuits work and how to build them. And throughout the Science Center it was hard to miss just how many of the engineering and STEAM professionals present were women—a group often underrepresented in STEAM fields like engineering.

In Boeing Hall, the Science Center’s YES Program was in attendance, too.

There, the YES Program’s Engineering component displayed an electric go-kart (built by the YES Teens themselves) and discussed with guests the different parts and components of the kart, as well as how it works and what the design process is like.

The YES Teens also brought their collection of Sphero Bolt robots—small, spherical remote controlled robots. After mapping out a maze with painter’s tape on the floor, the YES Teens demonstrated how to use phones and laptops to pilot the robots through the maze in the shortest amount of time, an activity that prompted more than one child to call their family members over to take part in the fun.

For an event designed to get the St. Louis community excited about engineering, there was something for just about everyone. At SciFest: Engineering Expo, that’s par for the course—racing robots included.