For the past decade, Pickering Associates has been fortunate to be a partner in education with Hamilton Middle School in Parkersburg, W.Va. This year we have expanded this opportunity and now are excited to announce our new partnership with Marietta Middle School. A Partner in Education for Pickering Associates is not only supporting the schools in various efforts to bring new opportunities to the students but also involves the students and hands-on activities that help show them what it is Pickering Associates- Architects Engineers, and Surveyors does as a service industry.
Throughout four days in February, dedicated members of Pickering Associates’ team were able to perform two different hands-on, educational activities. The first activity we worked with the 8th-grade students on was our “Power Tower” activity. This activity is geared towards challenging students to design and build not only the tallest but the strongest tower, with very few given materials. The purpose of this activity was to help students get a better understanding of what our engineers do on the job, from designing a project, to managing the team and budgeted materials, all the way to construction. Each team of students was given some newspaper, string, and masking tape. Their goal was to create the highest “cell phone” tower that can hold a “receiver” or better known as an egg at its top. Congratulations to our winning teams from both schools. Hamilton’s team was able to build a tower that was 9 feet tall and Marietta’s team tower reached 10 feet in height!
The second activity we were privileged to complete with the 6th-grade students at both schools was focused around chemical engineering. Our chemical engineer on staff, Patrick Flora, led students through various experiments to show the applied effects of science. From there he led the students through an experiment of their own. The students were able to apply ratio skills to create slime, by adding certain elements together (water, glue, and borax) which caused a bonding agent that let them see the materials come together in front of their eyes. The students loved the activity and were able to learn a little bit about chemical reactions along the way. It is always a pleasure to work with the students and to strengthen our beliefs in furthering education while being an active member of our community at large.