Hosting organization: Woodbridge Public Library
County: Middlesex
Total Attendees: 78
For this STEM Month, the Woodbridge Public Library highlighted the Iconic Women of STEM with a few of their programs. The main program, held on March 30th, was the Mothers of Invention presentation by Carol Simon Levin. Carol portrayed Lillian Moller Gilbreth, an industrial engineer depicted in the film Cheaper by the Dozen. The speaker introduced the audience to Margaret Knight, Hedy Lamarr, and several other women innovators. To continue the theme, the Woodbridge Public Library hosted several movie nights that centered around women in STEM, such as Hidden Figures, Gorillas in the Mist, Gravity, and Erin Brockovich. After the program, we had several patrons stop outside the meeting room and discuss why they loved the movie and how they learned something new from it. For our teen program on March 29th, the teen librarians held a Navigating a Book Maze program. In the program, teens learned how to code a Sphero Bolt through a maze of books. Once they grasped the idea of controlling the Sphero, they were broken up into two teams and created two new mazes to navigate. After they finished making the mazes, the teams switched to each other’s mazes and raced against each other to get the Sphero out of the maze. Finally, the children’s department hosted a DIY Paper Circuit Card program on March 30th. In this program, the children learned how to create an electronic circuit using copper tape to connect a led bulb to a coin cell battery held in place by a binder clip. They used what they learned to create cards to give to their friends and family for various occasions.