This past weekend, our student chapter along with Eric Nordstrom, one of our Student
Activities Co-Chairs, worked a booth at Explore UT. We were explaining the concept of pressure drop by having students blow bubbles in a cup of water through progressively longer straws. The students we interacted with ranged in age from as little as five years old to seniors in high school. It was interesting to see the different ages respond to the experiment. While most of the younger students were just content blowing bubbles, some of them really got into the activity and were surprisingly knowledgeable about topics of pressure and related subjects like friction and leakage. The older students were able to talk to us a little bit more in-depth about the concepts and, despite the simplicity, seemed to enjoy the activity. We were kept relatively busy throughout the event and had some good attendance at our table. There were also a few groups that had actively sought out our table/activity and it was great to hear they were interested in what we did and had to say!

I (Hagen Fritz) was proud to represent the student branch of ASHRAE at Explore UT and help get students thinking about the topic of HVAC, MEP engineering, and related fields. I want to give a shout out to the other volunteers: Sangeetha Kumar, Viv Martinez, and Dana Whitten. They were extremely informative and tailored their explanations well to the different age groups that were present. We could not have done this without our great student activities chairs and volunteers so I thank you and here’s to another successful event!