women rock science

Rocket Girls at Women Rock Science

June 11, 2015
Cross-posted from: Women Rock Science

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Meet Mary Sherman Morgan, rocket scientist, munitions and chemical engineer and one of the most instrumental players in the launch of America’s first satellite, Explorer I (shown above). According to her colleagues she “single-handedly saved America’s space programme”.

Mary started out life as a poor farm girl in North Dakota, her parents chose not to educate her by choice so that she could work on the farm. Eventually, she managed to graduate high school and then ran away from home to go to college and study chemical engineering.

During her studies, WWII broke out and there was a shortage of chemists in the country. Mary was offered a “Top Secret” job at a factory and had to accept without being told what the factory made or what her job would be. It turned out it was a munitions factory – Mary was put in charge of the manufacture of 3 different types of explosive. In her tenure the factory produced over 1 billion pounds of ordnance for WWII.
Read more Rocket Girls at Women Rock Science

Categories: Featured Blog, Women in STEM, Women's History
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Teenage girls invent app to track police violence

December 23, 2014

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skulls-and-tea:

“14-year-old Parkview High School Freshman, Caleb Christian was concerned about the number of incidents of police abuse in the news.  Still, he knew there were many good police officers in various communities, but had no way of figuring out which communities were highly rated and which were not.  

So, together with his two older sisters: Parkview High School senior Ima Christian, and Gwinnett School of Math, Science, and Technology sophomore, Asha Christian, they founded a mobile app development company– Pinetart Inc., under which they created a mobile app called Five-O.

Five-O, allows citizens to enter the details of every interaction with a police officer.  It also allows them to rate that officer in terms of courtesy and professionalism and provides the ability to enter a short description of what transpired.  These details are captured for every county in the United States. Citizen race and age information data is also captured. 

Additionally, Five-O allows citizens to store the details of each encounter with law enforcement; this provides convenient access to critical information needed for legal action or commendation.”

Read more here. [x]

 

Women Rock Science: A site dedicated to celebrating the achievements of women and girls in science

Categories: Featured Blog
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