Students pit block shelters against ocean wave power

Story Posted: Fri, May 2, 2008

BY WINSTON ROSS
The Register-Guard
Published: May 2, 2008 12:00AM

CORVALLIS — Screams erupted from the mouths of elementary school students as a powerful tsunami bore down upon their carefully constructed shelters on Thursday, some of which were obliterated by the wave.

The students’ screeches were purely academic, however; their shelters only scale models; the tsunami only a simulation, if a believable one.

For the past year, hundreds of students across Oregon have been using computer-aided design techniques to create model refuges from a very real threat to the coast. Their efforts faced a critical test at Oregon State University: Would a tsunami knock down their models, or would they survive?

Their excitement was hard to contain.

“We’ve been on a field trip all day,” Syndey Roberts, a fifth-grader from Clover Ridge Elementary School in Albany said, her voice careening off the walls at the O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory, which can generate simulated tsunami waves. “And this is the coolest thing we’ve ever done.”

How much cooler can it get, really, than to learn about tension, torsion and stress, then get to use a computer to design a tsunami shelter, then simulate a tsunami on the computer and then actually build the structure to see if it withstands a real wave?

Not much.

“This is absolutely incredible,” said Beth Riley, Roberts’ teacher. “It goes from the inception, the theoretical, then back to the practical — and of course, they love destroying things.”

The concept came about a year ago thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation aimed at bringing the concept of engineering modeling into the classroom. The challenge, said Rozeanne Steckler, director of education for the Northwest Alliance for Computational Science and Engineering, was to find a way to do that while maintaining students’ — and teachers’ — interest levels.

Teachers were brought to OSU for a week of training, then took the lesson plans to students, who learned how to apply computer models to their tsunami shelter designs.

Students could use up to 200 small wooden blocks, held together by toothpaste, to make their shelters, which are one-fiftieth scale models.

The payoff came Thursday, Steckler said, in “the expressions on the kids’ faces. We’re hoping they’ll make the connection that engineering is fun, that trying new things is fun.”

There were no winners and losers as a result the test, although a certain amount of friendly competition was bound to arise.

“The most colorful one is the best,” said John Bose, 11, a Clover Ridge fifth-grader. “And mine is the most colorful one.”