Pickering Associates professionals spent Thursday with 8th grade students at Hamilton Middle School, designing and building cell phone towers out of news paper, string, and tape.
The ‘Tower of Power” challenged students to work as a team, design and build a structurally sound tower out of limited materials that would not only be tall enough to get a ‘good signal’, but would be strong enough to support the delicate equipment – a raw egg. With 40 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 measure the results. Towers ranged from 32″ to 99″ inches high, measured from the gym floor to the bottom of the egg. Students found that sometimes the tallest towers weren’t the most sound, but thankfully only a few toppled under pressure. In the end, the top five teams were awarded prizes for having the tallest standing towers.
“We love working with Hamilton Middle School Students and providing them an opportunity to learn more about what we do in the fields of architecture, engineering and surveying through the Partner in Education program,” explains Sarah Arnold, Director of Marketing and Sales at the firm. “This project encourages students to work together in teams, with people they may not know or have worked with before. Team work and communication throughout a project is essential, so it’s a great lesson for the students to learn.” In the end, every student was participating and engaged, helping their team reach new heights.
Pickering Associates is looking forward to returning to Hamilton Middle School on March 10th for their next activity, Chemical Engineering Day, with Process Engineer Patrick Flora.
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.
