Pickering Associates, the Mid-Ohio Valley’s premier architecture, engineering, and surveying firm, spent Thursday with 7th grade students at Hamilton Middle School, designing and sailing model boats made of recyclables.
The ‘Rain Gutter Regatta’ challenged students to work as a team, design and build a seaworthy model boat, and then sail it down an inflatable gutter. With 35 minutes of design and building time, students had to focus on what was the most practical approach, as opposed to what looked cool but wasn’t functional.
Once the designing and building stages were complete, it was time to race. Students flanked the gutters and using only one natural resource, their breath, huffed, puffed and blew their boats down the gutter. In the end, one team was crowned the winner.
“We love working with Hamilton Middle School Students and providing them a little look into the worlds of architecture, engineering, and surveying. One of our goals is to encourage and inspire students to consider the possibility of careers in these fields,” explains Erin Iafelice-McCullough, sales and marketing director at the firm. “It’s a day well spent. The students are learning and this close to the end of the school year, they’re excited to get out of the classroom, work with their heads and hands, and participate in some friendly competition.”
Established in 1988, Pickering Associates was founded as an engineering firm that has developed into an integrated architecture, engineering and surveying company providing services in education, government, healthcare, industrial, oil & gas and private sector clients.
