Barneveld sixth and seventh grade science classes learn engineering concepts through a Tower Challenge competition. Their teacher, Ms. Benish, organized this project with Westbrook Associated Engineers to demonstrate practical applications of what students are learning in their math and science classes. The purpose of this challenge is to encourage creative thinking, organization and the value of planning.

Mike Carpenter and Jeff Koch, engineers from Westbrook, visited the middle school classes to teach the students about engineering structures. They informed them about geometric shapes and their strengths (i.e., a triangle is stronger than a square), the different types of structures, building materials and gave them the basic design principals of building a structure.

In the project, students deal with the same problems faced by designers and engineers in the real world. They are given specific design parameters with which their structure must comply. Teams comprised of two or three students were instructed to design and build a 30-inch tower using only three ounces of balsa wood and common household glue. The towers were designed and constructed during class time, challenging the students to develop the tower by themselves.

Engineers from Westbrook returned to the classroom to “load test” the structures on March 11 and 14. The students all patiently waited their turn to see if their tower withstood the largest load. In the end, the sixth grade teams tower that endured the largest load was that of Krista McSherri, Sarah Ziegler and Alexis Brown. Their tower held an amazing 159-pound load. The winning seventh grade team was Tyler Schultz, Lucas Danz and Jacob Thronson whose tower held a 188-pound load.