University at Buffalo (UB)
Inspiring future civil engineers
Students in UB's American Society of Civil Engineers club held a gumdrop and spaghetti tower building session prior to their trip to Holland Middle School.
By Peter Murphy
Published February 13, 2024
Members of the University at Buffalo’s American Society of Civil Engineers (UB ASCE) seismic design team visited Holland Middle School last fall to discuss what the team does and show students how to build gumdrop towers. They left feeling inspired.
“I think it’s so important to let children explore all of the professions out there and learn what some civil engineers do, especially with a hands-on activity,” says Tuan Le, a senior civil engineering student and seismic design team project manager.
UB ASCE was approached by teachers at Holland Middle School in 2022 to give a presentation and plan activities associated with civil engineering. The club developed a presentation and activity for the school’s Innovation Day, an event where students learned about careers in the STEM field.
In October 2023, UB ASCE sent its steel bridge team—one of several UB ASCE teams that also includes concrete canoe and seismic design—to the middle school in Holland, New York, about thirty miles from Buffalo. The steel bridge team held an egg drop challenge where students created a protective device to stop an egg from breaking when dropped from a second-story window.
This year, the seismic design team explained the role engineers play in developing some of the world’s most famous buildings and planned another activity.
“The team started off with a presentation showing famous buildings like the Empire State Building, asked the kids if they recognized them, and explained how engineers are involved in the design process,” Le says. “We also introduced earthquakes and what our seismic design team does, and how it all relates to safety and civil engineering.”
After the presentation, Le and other UB ASCE club members then split the students into groups and had them build towers out of raw spaghetti and gumdrops. This exercise and the prior presentation appeared to have a significant impact on the middle-schoolers, and left an impression on the UB ASCE members, as well.
“From the start, kids were jumping up and raising their hands to tell us they know the name of a building. Once the construction started, we were able to teach the kids basic concepts like breaking the spaghetti into smaller pieces for more support and relate those to more complicated structural design concepts like column buckling,” Le says. “Seeing fifth graders understand a concept I feel like I just learned was really inspiring.”
Le says the UB ASCE team members who volunteered learned about mentoring and engaging an audience about engineering concepts. He also says the students had fun learning and impressed many members of the club’s seismic design team.
“During our last session, one group of kids built a six-foot gumdrop tower. It was the tallest our team had ever seen, even when searching online,” Le says. “The seismic design team ran the same event with ASCE club members, and we got nowhere close. Independent of our help, these students discovered that interlocking triangles created a repeatable pattern. It was unbelievable.”
UB ASCE plans to participate in this event again this fall. This time, the concrete canoe team will develop activities, and teach more civil engineering concepts to another fifth-grade class.