You Can Be Anything › All careers › Trades & Skilled Labor
Boilermaker
Builds, installs, and repairs boilers, tanks, and large pressure vessels used in power plants and factories.
Did you know?
The safety rules boilermakers follow began with the ASME Boiler Code of 1914, written after a factory boiler explosion in Massachusetts in 1905.
How subjects help
- Physics: Build tanks strong enough to hold steam at high pressure without bursting.
- Chemistry: Choose steels that resist rust and heat inside boilers and chemical tanks.
- Mathematics: Calculate and mark out steel plates that roll into a perfect cylinder.
A famous name
Richard Trevithick: Cornish engineer who pioneered high-pressure steam boilers and designed the Cornish boiler around 1812.
Try it yourself: Design a box that keeps ice frozen
- Plan how to wrap or fill your box so heat cannot get in. Think about layers and gaps.
- Build your insulated box, tearing paper and foil by hand. Put one ice cube on a saucer inside it and close it up.
- Put the second ice cube on a saucer next to the box, with nothing around it. This is your comparison.
- After an hour, open the box and compare the two cubes. Then change one thing in your design and test again.
HVAC technicians, boilermakers and cryogenics researchers choose and fit insulation so heat stays where it should: keeping a building warm, a boiler hot or a super-cold tank cold.
Adapted from DiscoverE: Keep a Cube.
Also try: Test a tile pattern that fits together.
Known for it in
USA, Australia, Canada, Germany, UK