Math Professors Patricia Bauman and Jean Rubin led a math workshop at the annual "Expanding Your Horizons" career conference for middle school girls held on April 27. Sponsored by the Department of Chemistry and Iota Sigma Pi (a national honor society for women in chemistry and related sciences), the day-long conference offered 33 hands-on workshops designed to increase young women's interest in mathematics and science and foster awareness of career opportunities for women in math and science related fields.
Each girl attended three sessions in which leaders used unique methods to teach various topics, including electricity, molecular biology, food science, metallurgy, and DNA fingerprinting. "I think when they see people, especially women, who make these topics interesting, it makes them realize that it's possible to do these things," said Bauman. "They get to see it's not just men who do this work."
Clustered around work tables in the Brown Laboratory of Chemistry, the girls watched Bauman and Rubin conduct demonstrations that used pails and buckets of soapy water to make bubbles and teach some principles of mathematics. Using cubes made with plastic, circles designed with wire, and rectangles consisting of straws and yarn, the students fashioned bubbles of various shapes and sizes, and they learned about angles, elasticity, minimal surfaces, and three-dimensional principles.