[MUSIC PLAYING]
NARRATOR: Girls Who Build is an outreach effort focused
on getting high school girls excited about science
and engineering.
We hold hands on workshops where girls
learn from industry experts and experiment with technologies,
like wearable electronics and robotics.
For our latest workshop, 40 girls
came to the MIT Lincoln Laboratory Beaver Work Center
to learn all about cameras.
We wanted to show the girls how optics, sensors, and image
processing combine to make apps they use
everyday, like Instagram, work.
GIRL: I got to see how filters work and how they're made
and how I can make them too.
NARRATOR: The girl tore apart old digital and film cameras
to see how they're made.
Then they built their own cameras
using a Raspberry Pi computer and camera module.
GIRL 2: It was just cool how we had to make the camera
and put the different parts together.
It was made everything a lot more clear
about how normal cameras work.
NARRATOR: The girls heard from speakers
who talked about how cameras are used in fields as diverse
as searching for exoplanets, underwater salvage,
improving cancer treatment, and 3D tomography.
GIRL 3: My favorite part of the day
was listening to all the key note
speakers because they were all so passionate about what
their field was.
But it all connected to one core idea of the camera technology.
GIRL 4: Whoa.
GIRL 5: I mean, you can move all the way around here though.
GIRL 4: That's so cool.
KRISTEN RAILEY: I started Girls Who
Build because I am a female engineer who didn't grow up
fixing cars with my dad.
I had no previous exposure to power tools, circuits,
or programming before college.
It's my vision that when girls enter college,
they have the same hands on engineering
background as their peers.
I want them to realize they can use power tools, code,
and solder too.
The issue isn't an inability or intelligence, but just
a lack of exposure to these things.
I would like girls to discover the amazing power
of engineering, even before they apply to college.
GIRL: I was definitely thinking about computer science
as a profession so I thought this was a super cool way
to get more experience out of that before I went off
to college.