CEAT hosts Outreach Activities for Seventh Graders

testing

CEAT and the College of Engineering’s Mc4West Outreach Program hosted 40 seventh grade students from the Chicago public schools on Monday, October 10, 2005 for a day of learning about engineering and engineering majors.

At CEAT, the students participated in team building activities focused on civil engineering. They used the structural engineering concepts learned in the Mc4West Saturday Academy to evaluate the best engineered water towers. Load and stability were the characteristics that the students used in their evaluation. The students evaluated six water tower models for load and stability before the models were placed on a small scale shake table and loading machine to determine the most sound design. The winner tower was able to hold 46.2 times its own weight.

Minosca Alcantara and Eve Earles, CEAT Academic Staff, coordinated the outreach event. CEAT Graduate Student, Robert Rodden, and MAE Center Graduate Students, Nick Burdette and Tom Nagle lead the demonstrations and evaluations of the water tower structures.

The students also visited the Beckman Institute where they learned about Computer Science and received a tour of the CAVE, the Siebel Center and the Physics Department.

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The six water tower that were evaluated and tested for the most sound design.

rob talking

Students learning about water towers from CEAT Graduate Student, Robert Rodden.

nick testing

Minosca Alcantara, Nick Burdette and Robert Rodden testing the water towers on the shake table.

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Tom Nagle, MAE Center Graduate Student, tests the water towers for load capacity in the Newmark Structural Engineering Lab.

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The students watch to see how much load the water towers can hold.