Macademics: Wearables

Welcome to our new series Macademics! This series will be the first Thursday of every month and we will be writing about various topics within our respective STEM disciplines that are applied in the real-world. This series is really exciting to me because for me during school, the biggest motivation for me was knowing all the different places in the world where I could apply what I’m learning in school. We hope you enjoy it at that it keeps you inspired and motivated!

For this week’s post, I want to talk about ‘wearables’ or Wearable technology. Wearables are electronic devices that are worn on the body either as an implant or an accessory item. They can either be used for your personal every-day life or even for business needs. Today’s wearable devices are often times used as:

• Fitness tracker

• Fashion statement piece

• Navigation

• Treatmentfor health disorders

• Monitoring specific health issues (stress, energy, alertness, heart rate)

• Communication

• Media consumption

Examples of Wearables are:

• Fitbit

• AppleWatch

• GoogleGlasses

• SnapchatSpectacles

• Wireless Headphones

Software Applications relating to wearables are:

• Connectivity

• Electronics

• Software

• Sensors

Fitbit Charge 2

I work out about 3-4 times a week so my Fitbit auto-tracking (almost) all of my workouts is really cool and I can see my heart rate and energy used throughout. However, recognizing walking for me and counting it as an exercise is not something I want so I had to change my Fitbit settings to ignore any long walks that I may do during the day (I work in New York City so you can imagine I do a lot of walking)

Hope you enjoyed this Macademics post. Tune in next month! – The Engineer

#wearables #Fitbit #Charge2 #BlackWomenInStem #Technology #Engineering #Bluetooth