Power Up Youth Conference in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories

On Tuesday December 6, 2011, while a heavy wind was bearing down on Yellowknife, the Williams Engineering Canada (WEC) boardroom became a haven of laughter and loud popping noises. As has become an annual event, WEC hosted a series of workshops on engineering for the Skills Canada “Power Up” Youth Conference for grade eight girls around the Northwest Territories and Nunavut.

Skills Canada organizes these conferences each year to introduce and attract students to the trades and non-traditional occupations. Workshops with pilots, engineers, RCMP members, plumbers, mines, opticians, and graphic designers were on the schedule for the girls who were able to choose several workshops that they were interested in throughout the day. Elaine Carr, a mechanical engineer in WEC’s Yellowknife office, tried to show the girls what it was like to go through the engineering design and construction process by having them design and build their own “Rube Goldberg” machine (named after the famed cartoonist). After an introduction to engineering, and an inspiring internet video of a really cool Rube Goldberg machine, the girls were encouraged to use a variety of materials and have as many steps as possible in order to complete the task of popping a balloon, learning a little about energy transfer and materials use in between the trials and successes. Hot wheel cars, spikes, thumbtacks, pvc tubing, cardboard, duct tape, marbles, and funnels were among the available materials to construct the most complicated balloon popper they could imagine. By the end of each workshop, the girls all had some fun, heard many balloons pop, and learned that duct tape is a highly valuable resource. The main purpose of volunteering for this event is to introduce girls to the skill sets required for engineering and let them know that they are capable of many different types of careers in the engineering field. Elaine is hopeful that some of these girls will seriously consider engineering when it comes to choosing a post-secondary education, but most importantly that they will have all gained a bit of confidence in their own abilities to accomplish a task that they set out to do and some knowledge about their own skills that may have been unknown to them before.