On March 27 at around 9:30 a.m., a series of earthquakes ranging in magnitude from four to nine took place in Gina Mason’s seventh-grade science class in room 120 at Ecker Hill Middle School. Fortunately, the sporadic set of quakes only affected about a square foot of space where students placed towers they had built to withstand the simulated force of the natural disaster.
Admittedly, some of the towers didn’t inspire the most confidence. Constructed with wood glue, balsa wood and heavy metal plates that served as different floors, one of the towers noticeably leaned. Another tower — built by an aptly named group of students who called themselves the Demolition Corp. — didn’t make it to the vibrating board before falling under its weight as the class watched with only half-surprised faces.
The majority of the structures, however, proved to be much tougher than they looked, several of them refusing to fall even after repeated jolts of magnitude nine quaking.
Mason’s promise of lunch for the winning team gave the experiment a competitive edge, which she determined by watching recordings of the towers to see which withstood the longest without so much as cracking.
Before their jostled reckoning, each team gave a presentation in which they told the class what techniques they decided to use to fortify their towers and why they decided to use them.
“We chose to do a lot of cross bracing because cross bracing is used to keep buildings stable when the wind blows,” Lizza Fellows explained to the class.
Her group’s name was Dan’s Mom, and Dan’s Mom’s tower was the first to take the stand.
The nervous students crowded around the platform prepared for the worst but hoping those preparations were made in vain. It wasn’t until it tried to withstand magnitude nine quakes that a lower floor took flight and the suddenly unsupported weight of the higher floors made quick work of the thin balsa wood.
Dan’s Mom was not the only group to rely on cross braces to strengthen their towers, though many different strategies were implemented throughout the experiment.
Luke Kovak and his group Bob the Builder’s tower managed to stay upright throughout the entire activity. He said he’s come to appreciate both cross braces and what they do to fortify structures, as well as counterbalances. He found both techniques were implemented when he studied the 1,667 foot Taipei tower in Taiwan.
“This counterweight is absolutely massive,” he explained.
Another team, The Quaker Shakers, decided to lean into the flexibility of their building materials.
“We realized that the balsa wood that we were using, since it wasn’t a hard kind of wood, it’s pretty flexible,” said group presenter Sofia Fregulia.
Not wanting to restrict that flexibility, the team stuck to a simpler structure, complete with basic diagonal braces.
The decision somewhat cost their building its posture, and it leaned forward precariously, but their methodology proved sound and earned them lunch. Not one piece of their flexible balsa wood cracked before it was subjected to magnitude nine shakes.
Mason, who said she’s repeated the experiment with her classes for about 25 years, said the experiment serves to educate her students about the design engineering process.
“They have to do research to solve a problem,” she said. “They had to brainstorm designs. They had to come up with a scale model. They had to test their scale model,” she explained. “Now they’ll go back, look at their videos. They’ll revamp their designs.”
She said she typically has a pretty good idea of who will take the cake even before the first earthquake strikes, and a large part of her prediction comes from seeing the kids work together.
“First off, it’s design. But it’s also how well they build, how precise they cut the wood, how well they measure,” she said. “They all had their scale models off someway, and then they had to go back because it’s not really a skill they practice very often.”
Mason explained she teaches her students with an activity-before-content philosophy, which she said gives them an experience they can use to contextualize and understand their studies. Her class performs weekly labs.
“It’s just a definite more real-world application to science,” she said. “They’re way more engaged. You can keep them focused. They produce a lot better work.”
The Quaker Shakers won the day. The group consisted of Fregulia, Charlotte Gallagher, Bryn Tschabrun, Sawyer Kelly and Benjamin Stearns.