Eyes in the Skies
Posted on September 28th, 2017 by Mary Lord
After Hurricane Harvey inundated Houston with historic rains, engineering researchers Texas A&M University offered a quick, inexpensive way to survey the damage. They deployed drones – lots of them – in the biggest squadron ever used in an official disaster response.
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Tags: Drones, engineering research, Environmental Engineering, hurricane, National Science Foundation, Robotics, Science, search and rescue, unmanned aerial systems, Videos
Hurricanes, earthquakes, and other destructive events offer timely “teachable moments” about the role of engineers in improving weather forecasts and reducing the toll from natural disasters. eGFI Teachers’s collection of activities, feature articles, and other resources can help you integrate engineering into your classes – and inspire the next generation of “crisis” engineers.
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.
Working in groups of 8, middle school students use their senses to describe and predict the weather, then act as state park engineers and design/build “backyard weather stations” to gather data to make actual weather forecasts.
