Ballparks have come a long way from the baseball diamond cut into an Iowa cornfield in the 1989 movie Field of Dreams. Engineers have found new ways to design ever-more spacious stadiums, with better views, smart systems that reduce energy costs, and even apps that let you order food from craft beer to peanuts delivered to your seat.

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Filed under: Special Features | Comments Off on Fields of Dreams

Tags: ballpark, baseball, Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, fields, Sports Engineering, stadium, Technology

Elementary students act as civil engineers to design and build a house that the big, bad wolf cannot blow down. If time allows, they can redesign and test their structures.

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Filed under: Class Activities, Grades K-5 | Comments Off on Three Little Pigs Design Challenge

Tags: Civil Engineering, Class Activities, Design, design challenge, ELA, Engineering Design Process, forces, Grades K-5, literacy, materials, NGSS, structures, three little pigs, wind

In this engineering design challenge about building in hurricane-prone regions, students learn that a solid base helps stabilize a structure by constructing, testing, and redesigning a tower that can support a tennis ball at least 18 inches off the ground while withstanding the wind from a fan.
Note: While suitable for all ages, this activity works best with upper elementary students and older.

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Filed under: Class Activities, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Grades K-5 | Comments Off on Building for Hurricanes

Tags: build, Civil Engineering, Class Activities, Engineering Design, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Grades K-5, hurricane, skyscraper

High school students working in groups of three to four learn about the primary causes and impacts of coastal erosion, and use elevation data to construct profiles of a beach over time or to compare several beaches, make inferences about the erosion process, and discuss how humans should respond.

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Filed under: Class Activities, Grades 9-12, Grades 9-12, Grades 9-12, Lesson Plans | Comments Off on Who Moved the Beach?

Tags: beach, Civil Engineering, Class Activities, coastal erosion, coastal management, data analysis, Earth Science, Environmental Engineering, erosion, Grades 9-12, jetties, Lesson Plan, NOAA, USGS

Like many New Jersey shore communities, Gandy’s Beach was devastated by Hurricane Sandy. The solution? Engage school communities in a real-world restoration project: Building a living breakwater from bags of old shells to protect both oyster beds and shoreline from future storm damage.

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Filed under: K-12 Education News, K-12 Outreach Programs, Special Features | Comments Off on Gimme Shell-ter

Tags: beach restoration, citizen engineering, Civil Engineering, Environmental Engineering, Environmental science, Hurricane Sandy, living reef, National Fish and Wildlife Service, Nature Conservency, oyster beds, Programs for Students, Project PORTS, resilence, Rutgers University

Hurricane Sandy’s devastating floods exposed the need to re-engineer coastal communities for resilience and sparked a novel method to generate innovative design solutions: Crowd-sourcing. The six competition winners are now putting their ideas into practice.

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Filed under: Special Features | Comments Off on Crowdsourcing Coastal Resilience

Tags: Civil Engineering, coastal engineering, crowdsourcing, design contest, Environmental Engineering, flooding, Hurricane Sandy, New York, Public Policy, rebuild by design, resilient structures

Students in grades 3 to 8 study coastal erosion and the apply the engineering design process to devise structures and policies to protect shorelines, taking public concerns into account.

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Filed under: Class Activities, Grades 6-8, Grades 6-8, Grades 6-8, Grades K-5, Grades K-5, Grades K-5, Lesson Plans | Comments Off on Save Our Shore!

Tags: beach, Civil Engineering, Class Activities, coastal engineering, Earth Science, Engineering Design Process, Environmental Engineering, erosion, Grades 6-8, Grades K-5, Lesson Plan, Marine Science, sand

The National Park Service just turned 100 and what better way to celebrate than with the grand opening of a stunning new addition to the National Mall. The $540 million National Museum of African American History and Culture is adorned with a corona, or scrim, of 3,600 bronze-colored cast-aluminum panels that glow at night from the light within, and was built around a 77-ton, 80-foot-long railway car and other huge artifacts housed in its vast below-ground exhibit space.

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Filed under: K-12 Outreach Programs, Special Features | Comments Off on American Roots

Tags: Civil Engineering, construction, History, National Mall, National Museum of African American History and Culture, National Park Service, Smithsonian

This ordinary-looking stretch of road is anything but. Nestled in the mountains of southwest Virginia, the 2.2 mile blacktop contains three bridges, an intersection–and a brain!

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Filed under: K-12 Outreach Programs, Special Features | Comments Off on A Smart Road for Driven Students

Tags: Civil Engineering, Electrical Engineering, sensors, smart road, software engineering, Transportation, Virginia Tech