STEM Like a Girl

Book excerpt: STEM Like a Girl empowers girls, 8-12, with the knowledge and confidence to become future problem solvers and leaders in the scientific world and beyond. This fully illustrated and photographic book profiles 35 inspiring girls and offers 15 hands-on, STEM-based experiments that they can do at home. While leading a hands-on engineering project in her son's elementary school, researcher and biotech engineer Sarah Foster noticed fewer girls raising their hands or jumping into the activities than the boys. Surprised to see a gender gap at play at such a young age, she decided to do something about it. She founded STEM Like a Girl in 2017 with the goal of introducing young girls to the fun and rewarding fields of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). In her first book, Sarah captures 35 girls expressing their love of all things STEM, Each girl speaks to her inspirations and role models, her favorite types of experiments, and why failure is almost always a good thing. Along with these profiles are 15 experiments girls can do at home on their own or with adults including extracting DNA from a strawberry, employing Newton's Third Law of Motion to build and fire an air cannon, and enacting acid-base chemistry to create homemade fizzy bath bombs.