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I'm Elizabeth Pappas and I am a Research Hydraulic Engineer for the USDA.
I work at the National Soil and Erosion Laboratory which is on the Purdue campus.
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I got excited early on, always very interested in the environment and outdoors
and things I can do to help preserve that.
What we're looking at here is a rainfall simulation.
We're applying a certain amount of rain to a paved surface and to a brick type surface,
a pervious paver surface, and we're looking at how each of those shed water and
might produce clotting.
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I was always very interested in how the world works, I used to ask my mother questions like
"Why is the sky blue?", "Why does a leaf change color in the fall?" and
she didn't know the answer to all of those questions so she would tell me
go to school and find out and then come back and tell me.
So I was always on a quest at school.
I learned how to find answers to questions like that.
The more I did that the more excited I got.
We're simulating a light rainfall right now.
The reason we're using a machine to do that rather than waiting for it to rain is because
when we compare different surfaces and how they shed water
we need for that rainfall to be exactly the same.
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In high school I decided to be, that I'd like to be an environmental scientist.
or environmental type engineer.
I talked to some environmental engineers, I followed them around for a couple days
to find out what they do all day.
One of the engineers said to me "You know, I can't believe I get paid for my job,
I'm basically playing in a sand box!"
I decided then that I wanted one of those sandbox jobs.
And I have it now!
This is, I love doing what I do.
We've had quite a bit of flooding in the Midwest.
It impacts people in town because somebody upslope from you has a lot of just pavement and
isn't using these alternative surfaces, then your house might flood or your basement might flood.
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My favorite part of my job is probably when we get to do this outside in the field.
We actually take these simulators out into farm fields and we do similar experiments on
soil and soil with different crop residues so that we can see how different cropping practices
impact flooding and erosion.
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If you are very interested in some certain area of science, I would encourage you to
think of all the questions that you have in that area and learn how to find those answers.
Whether its on the internet or ask your teachers or go to the library.
One thing that helped me a lot is actually visitng with people in those careers.
That really helped me to know what it is I'm studying for.
That's very motivating when you know that's what I want to do.
I'm going to work really hard to get there.
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