News view all news »

STEM Students Build Incredible Structures

In the early stages of designing our buildings of the future, STEM students studied building raised floors (decks) and distribution of dead weight and live weight in engineering class. Then the challenge was to build a scale model of an 8’ wide, 11’ long, 3’ high raised deck in a 1:12 scale. (Yes, you are correct! Those of you with keen analytical minds, that means the scale model is 8” x 11” x 3”).

The students were to build their scale models given two manila folders, two drinking straws, and 24” of masking tape. It needed to hold at least one text book, but as many as possible.

The clear winners were Abigail Dohmeier '14 and Abigail Borowy '14. Mr. Steve Cole, STEM Coordinator, stopped them at 35 textbooks, when the height gave him pause that someone might be hurt in an avalanche of cascading books!

This makes Abigail Dohmeier '14, the present undisputed structure-builder in the STEM program. Several weeks ago when we designed and built structures out of balsa wood of 1/8” x 1/8”, Abby built a structure that weighed 14.49 grams that held 223 pounds of weight before breaking. That’s a 15.4 pound/gram ratio. That would be the envy of most seasoned structure builders. For a novice, it is incredible.

Way to go Abby!