It is easy to define STEM: Science, Technology, Education, and Math. This doesn’t really tell us what STEM is and how it is important today more than ever. With the growth of technology in everyday life, it might be time to change the thinking of what is STEM to what isn’t STEM. Even modern cars being sold today have over a million lines of code! Let’s just think about that for a second. The essential function of a car (transportation) has remained unchanged since it’s inception. But what has changed is in cars is, well basically everything else. We now have cars achieving over 100 mpg and supercars going 0-60 in under 50 seconds. “Are we there yet?” has been replaced with “Can we watch more Dora?” (Disclosure: I have no kids so I just assume they all watch Dora). We can attribute most, if not all, of the recent advancements in cars to STEM.

So back to the question at hand: what is STEM? Well, next time you go about a simple task in your daily life take a second and think “how does STEM affect this task”. If you are like me you may begin to change your thinking to “what isn’t STEM”.