Oh, as a self-respecting EE I should say that I object to the one line in the movie that is rapidly becoming its catchphrase:
I'm gonna have to science the shit outta this.
With all due respect, he should have said
I'm gonna have to engineer the shit outta this.
There is a difference between science and engineering, ya know. Or to paraphrase a classic Star Trek exchange:
I'm a botanist, not an engineer!
Now you're an engineer!
100% agreement.
I told my 14 year old daughter, "learn new skills, master old ones, never take anything for granted" because she balked at my teaching her how to change a tire. It is better to be resourceful than anything else. If you can think outside the box to solve a problem, then you're ten steps ahead of everyone else. Intelligence is not the end-all and be-all. Academic performance only demonstrates how well you take tests. Critical thinking and the ability to apply knowledge is the ticket. So she grumbled all the while she was changing the tire in the backyard last summer. Until this past weekend. She came in from being at a friend's house for the weekend, and her friend's mom had taken them to the movies. Yep, they had a flat. The friend's mom got on her cell to call for roadside assistance, but my daughter got out, popped the trunk, and had the tire changed before the AAA guy even got there. Came back home all puffed up and proud of herself. Not as proud as I was.
Watney didn't really "science" anything. But he engineered everything.
Maybe Watney didn't like Wollowitz...?
ETA: A great story about your daughter.
I'm trying the same thing in small ways with my kids. Our oldest has just turned eight, and because he's profoundly deaf and wears cochlear implants, he has a "hearing bag" with implant-related things he has to take to school (spare batteries, FM receiver, FM microphone and so on). It's his responsibility to collect all these things at the end of the school day and put them in his hearing bag to bring home each day, and he's really quite good about it. He also knows how to change the batteries if that needs to be done.
We've also been reminding him that it's his job to tell his teacher when there's a problem of some sort, and to explain the problem; in other words, he has to be his own advocate - he can't rely on us to solve his problems all the time. And as time goes by he's going to have to start taking responsibility for disassembling his implants at bed-time, putting the batteries on to charge and putting the other components in the drying box.
He's still the dreamy-headed eight-year-old in other respects, but hopefully pushing this problem-solving side of things and praising him when he does it will spread to other aspects of his life.