CEAT Outreach Event with Mc4West High School Construction Institute
On June 21, 2006, thirty-three high school students from Chicago City Schools visited the UIUC Engineering Campus for a day of planned activities within the Engineering Departments.
The students are a part of the Mc4West Education Initiative, which is a group of programs designed to attract young people to the fields of architecture, engineering, and construction and to assist those already working in construction gain new skills and discover new opportunities for success. In cooperation with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign College of Engineering, the Illinois Institute of Technology, City Colleges of Chicago and other educational institutions, Mc4West is offering students who live in the project area opportunities to learn first-hand about engineering, architecture and construction everything related to creating buildings for home, work and play.
The Center of Excellence for Airport Technology (CEAT) hosted the students for two hours of learning and hands-on activities with Civil and Environmental Engineering principals. Water Physics and the Affects on Materials was the topic of the CEAT Program for the Mc4West visit. Professor David Lange and four CEAT MS and PhD students, Matt D’Ambrosia, Zach Grasley, Yi-Shi Liu and Rob Rodden, led the demonstrations and answered questions for the group.
The Mc4West students gained knowledge on the following civil engineering concepts about how water affects materials:
- Surface Tension and Capillary Action
- Water Interacts with Materials absorption, evaporation, and volume change
- Mechanical Properties of Materials and the effect of water
- Water and Ice Formation and the effect on materials
- Water and Hydration reactions with materials
Mc4West students learning water physics with activies, such as the floating paper-clip and oil & ice-cube demos shown above.
Matt D’Ambrosia talks to the students on water physics hydration and heat.
Rob Rodden demonstrates how water interacts with materials.