Recently I read about a museum exhibit that made me think there’s a possibility a display could help in attracting the next generation to the HVAC industry. The exhibit in question, located at the Mid-Michigan Children’s Museum in Saginaw, Mich., is called A-Mazing Airways. It is designed to be an interactive display to allow children to learn about air movement and wind.
According to one of the exhibit’s creators, children can change the airflow and put objects in the tubing to see how fast they go through the pipes. It examines how objects of all shapes and sizes move through the pipes.
Though the display is supposed to be teaching lessons about wind, it sounds to me like it could apply to the forced-air side of the HVAC industry. And, if you added water to those tubes, perhaps it could teach some lessons about the hydronics side of the industry, too.
So I’m wondering if that could be one piece in solving the attracting-more-techs-to-the-industry puzzle: Make learning the physics of HVACR fun, so fun, in fact, that the children don’t know they’re learning. And let them learn it at an early age to boot.
Now I know that this is by no stretch of the imagination going to solve the tech shortage by itself, but even if only a relatively small number of children got excited enough by to consider the industry when they were older, it may be worth the investment.
