Last week, 79 Chicago-area high school students visited the Energy Department’s Argonne National Lab for “Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day,” an educational outreach program designed to give 8th-grade girls an opportunity to explore careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). While at the Lab, the girls participated in tours to explore different aspects of the Lab’s work — from learning about the organisms that live in soil to floating small objects in mid-air with an acoustic levitator. In the afternoon, the girls were given a car chassis with a motor and challenged to figure out the types of wheels and pulleys needed to build a battery operated transmission. At an engineering expo, the girls were able to learn about the inner workings of various scientific concepts — from tornadoes to magnets and beyond. Throughout the day, the girls heard from scientists in a number of fields, including keynote speaker Joanne Manaster, a faculty lecturer in the School of Integrative Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In the photo above, two students work with an Argonne National Lab scientist to complete the “Automotive Tycoon” challenge. | Photo courtesy of Mark Lopez, Argonne National Laboratory.