John Wright, the senior vice-president for technology at Boots & Coots, an oil-well control company, explains to Lomax students how the BP well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico started -- and ended.
Forty guest speakers, including two engineers at the center of two major news events this year, spent Wednesday morning with students at Carter Lomax Middle School as part of Career Day activities.
Among the guests were Greg Hall,who provided technical assistance during the rescue of 33 trapped Chilean miners, and John Wright, who played a critical role in the capping of the BP oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.
Hall, the owner of Drillers Supply International in Houston, related his experiences working with the Chilean government to devise a plan for digging a rescue shaft that eventually brought all 33 miners safely to the surface weeks ahead of earlier projections. He showed video of the first breakthrough attempt to reach the miners and the celebration that followed that initial contact.
Wright, the senior vice-president for technology at Boots & Coot -- an oil-well control firm in Houston -- went to work on the Gulf oil blowout shortly after it happened on April 20. The well was capped in mid-September.
Wright recounted many times in his life when he heard others comment that his plans or his dreams were impossible.
"Impossible, to me, is just something that hasn't been done yet," Wright told the students.
The 40 speakers met with all fifth- and six-graders during four half-hour morning sessions.
The speakers list included a group of NASA engineers, engineers with Pinnacle Asset Group working in the oil and gas industry, designers and architects with the Rice Design Alliance, medical professionals from Memorial Hermann Southeast Hospital, and Dr. Jennifer Love, the head of the Harris County Forensic Sciences' anthropology division.
Event organizers at Lomax chose to emphasize science, technology, engineering and math in their selection of presenters.
Greg Hall, who recommended the design for the retrieval shaft used to rescue 33 Chilean miners, points to video showing camera footage of a pair of eyes -- those of a trapped miner -- during the first break-through dig.
Anjta Chambers, an expert on space suit and crew survival systems for NASA's Johnson Space Center, chats with sixth-graders Victoria Hernandez, Jack Nichols and Sarah West.
Dr. Jennifer Love, director of forensic anthropology for the Harris County Institute for Forensic Science, describes the characteristics and the location of a human thigh bone.
