At this year’s USA Science & Engineering Festival, Tektronix’ own Karl Kuhn, a senior field video application engineer who was recently selected by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) as an Eastern Region Governor, demonstrated the capabilities of our WFM5250 Waveform Monitor in the SMPTE booth.
The USA Science & Engineering Festival is part of a national effort to advance the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education initiative to inspire the next generation of scientists and engineers. The intent of the 2014 show was to demonstrate the science and technology behind the creative aspects of the film and video industry. We here at Tektronix are very proud to support the STEM education initiative by participating in SMPTE’s booth this year. The festival’s mission is to reinvigorate the interest of American youth in core STEM subjects by producing and presenting the most compelling, educational and entertaining science festival in the country.
In addition to supporting the STEM education coalition, Tektronix actively encourages employees to lend a hand by participating in associated activities. Karl’s extensive experience coupled with his participation in SMPTE made him a natural fit for this demo. Karl, alongside David Cox from Cree and Nephi Griffith from AARP, joined SMPTE’s director of education – Joel Welch – to bring real world examples of the creative aspects behind the film and video industry to the booth. David demonstrated the manufacturing processes behind LED lighting and showed how LEDs operate at much cooler temperature compared to conventional lighting while Nephi brought a digital cinema-grade video camera to perform live demonstrations of how various adjustments changed the look of the video that could be seen scientifically on the Tektronix WFM5250.
The festival is a free, family-friendly expo that allows kids and adults to participate in more than 3,000 hands-on activities and see more than 100 live performances on stage. The festival has over 750 partners, including industry leading companies, colleges and universities, engineering and scientific societies and government agencies. It’s estimated that more than 250,000 people to have participated this year in addition to the exhibitors and volunteers. We are delighted to have played a part in such a successful and highly attended event promoting youth involvement in STEM.