Shaking things up at SMHS

When reading up on types of earthquake-resistant structures, one will be greeted with a variety of options when it comes to construction.

Flexible foundations, seismic dampers, ductile materials which can either deflect, absorb, transfer or distribute vibrations from seismic activity. Professional architects and contractors have a variety of materials at their disposal to attempt this. The 8th grade science class at Saratoga Middle High School just had marshmallows and pasta noodles.

Yet, quite a few of their structures survived the rigorous testing of science teacher Lesley Urasky. The project was fairly straightforward with a number of real world applications. According to Urasky, teams of three were required to design, bid-out and construct their earthquake-resistant structures. This included coming up with blueprints for the structures, applying for a building permit and keeping track of the cost of material. To “apply” for the building permit, the students had to work with Mandy Moon while the blueprints and structures were judged by Todd Weber, who teaches industrial arts.

As for Urasky’s part, she had the honor of using a 3D printed earthquake simulator—which went up to three on the richter scale—to test how well the pasta structures could withstand seismic activity.

“I’m going to be the earthquake because I want to make sure there’s fairness in how much of a magnitude we have for everything,” said Urasky, to the class. “Other tiebreakers are going to be things like how much your structure weighs, how much money you spent on it. Remember, we’re looking at this as if we were contractors submitting a bid. If yours survived and it’s really, really expensive and somebody else’s survived and it’s less expensive, people always want to spend less money than more.”

There, however, had to be another factor to the test. It wasn’t enough just to see if the structures could wibble and wobble but not fall down. Each structure tested that day—some groups were missing a student and so their testing was postponed—also had to be able to protect an egg. Despite the unique and interesting design of some of the structures, they did little to protect the egg or completely fell apart at the first or second round of earthquakes. Some eggs, in fact, were catapulted to the floor with startling accuracy.

“It was pretty fun. Some groups spent their time wisely, some groups didn’t,” said Jett Arney, a student in Ursaky’s class. “Those that did have done really good so far, a lot of good engineering and creativity going on.”

The combined 3rd and 4th hour classes of 8th grade students watched with a mix of excitement and anxiety as the structures were tested. When a structure survived, cheers erupted in the classroom. Similarly, when a structure couldn’t withstand the testing, there were moans and groans of disappointment.

Arney and his project partner, Deuce Martin, didn’t test on February 20 as their other partner wasn’t in school that day. Still, both were hopeful that when their structure was tested, it would pass with flying colors.

“We did have a setback,” said Martin. “Our project fell off the desk so we had to start over.”

Not competing that day, however, gave them the opportunity to see why some structures worked and others didn’t.

“They definitely had a lot of good support,” said Arney.They had sturdy yet flexible foundations was the thing I saw.”

“Flexible material, but strong enough to hold it together,” added Martin.