On November 16, the Wheaton Charter of the Society of Women Engineers was invited to Boeing for their Multi-Cultural STEM event. Members of SWE listened to Loe Brooks, the Vice President of Defense, Space and Security at Boeing and Jordan Spooner from DC CAP to kick off the event.
Juan Poma from Boeing presented on the Space Launch System and how Boeing was working on the first transport shuttle to Mars.
After the first talks, the group was broken up into to parts, and set into group rotations. Some members started with learning about high aspect ratio wings and enjoyed building paper airplanes, aimed to hold a penny as cargo.
Then they moved on to high aspect ratio wing, where they learned about how airplane wings are very thin and long but yet still are able to lift the heavy body of the plane. The members immediately jumped into the construction of a two foot long wing by folding the given index cards into trusses and then covering those in a outside layer of index cards taped together with overlap.
The members ended the rotation learning about balloon rockets and how the position of a coin or no coin affects the movement of a balloon on a string.
Then there was another talk by Bercely Hurtado, a Liaison Engineer, Philadelphia Prof.,Chapter SHPE President, who talked about the SHPE (Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers) program. Also a talk by Miguel Gonzalez, about the history of Boeing and what it is like to have a career at Beoing.