Thursday, March 9, 2017

Visit from a Civil Engineer with STEPS

We had a visit from a wonderful civil engineer today.
Martin O'Keeffe is an engineer with Roadstone company.
He came to tell us all about being an engineer today.
Martin showed us some of the things he uses in his work every day (a hard hat, a calculator, a high visibility vest and a trundle wheel).  He uses lots of maths and science in his work.
We saw this great video about what engineers do exactly!
Next it was our turn.
Each group was given some toothpicks (cocktail sticks), some balls of play doh and some straws.
We had to make nice strong houses...we showed Martin we know lots already about 2D and 3D shapes so this helped when we constructed our houses.  We used the sticks as walls, the play doh as corners and the straws as struts to make our houses stronger.
When our houses were finished we tested how strong they were.
Martin had brought a bowl of jelly.
We put our houses on the jelly and he shook the bowl.
We were delighted when our houses stayed standing even after enormous (jelly) earthquakes.
This was such fun.
Now we all want to be engineers when we grow up!

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