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Hidden Weakness

Tiotihuacan pyramidIt towered for centuries over Teotihuacán, the largest city in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Today, Mexico’s famed Pyramid of the Sun risks slowly sinking and crumbling like a sand castle.

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Engineering a Sandcastle

sustainable green globeTufts University students took to the beach for a fun, hands-on lesson in engineering design, creativity, and materials science.

Photo: Alonso Nichols. Tufts Now

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Build it Better!

tornado funnel cloudStudents in grades 3 to 5 work in groups to design a structure that will withstand and protect people from tornadoes. Each group then creates a poster with the name of their engineering firm and a picture of their structure. Finally, each group presents their posters to the class.

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Disaster Engineering

Hurricane Maria strands PR familiesHurricanes, 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.

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Shapes of Strength

house of cards with coins on topStudents in grades 3 to 5 use engineering problem solving to create structures from paper, straws, tape, and paper clips that can support the weight of at least one textbook. For the second trial, they examine examples of successful buildings in history and try again.

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Building Bridges to Literature

Concord Hymn rude bridge poemDesigning, building, and testing bridges can help students develop teamwork and problem-solving skills along with inspiring their interest in engineering. Such hands-on projects also can fuel an interest in reading about bridges. Here are some notable titles that might strike a chord with your budding civil and structural engineers.

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The Eiffel Tower Turns 125

eiffel towerThe world’s most visited man-made monument turned 125 this year. Built for the Paris World’s Fair of 1889, French engineer Gustave Eiffel’s famous tower attracted scorn before it opened. But its role as a research lab for weather, aviation, and telecommunications helped ensure its longevity.

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‘Vertical’ Engineers Get Capital View

washington monument engineer1Structural engineer Emma Cardini has inspected some pretty impressive facades, including the Chicago Tribune Tower’s ornate spires and the Bridge of the Americas in Panama. Still, nothing compares with the capital bird’s eye view she literally enjoys on her latest job: rappelling down the marble sides of the Washington Monument to assess the damage from late August’s 5.8-magnitude earthquake.

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Pipe-Cleaner Towers

pipe cleanersIn this short, fun activity for students in grades 2 to 12, teams learn about the engineering design process, including constraints on time and materials, by building the tallest free-standing tower out of pipe-cleaners.

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