It’s a humbling sound: middle-schoolers hearing a structure crash into pieces after they spent the past five weeks building it.
For Jefferson Middle School student Emma Davis, it’s also a familiar sound.
“This is our building and they did a thing called a tornado, which went like that — really fast and twisted — so that's why ours broke," the Oceanside sixth-grader said with a laugh.
Despite the setback, Emma could still envision herself engineering professionally someday.
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Emma and nearly 200 other students from Jefferson and National City's Palmer Way Elementary are all part of the seismic outreach program, spending weeks creating a structure before attending a design competition where they place their project on a shake table to see if it can withstand an earthquake.
“It did not pass the test, but it's OK because we've tried really hard and I'm proud of it,” Emma said.
Lelli Van Den Einde was proud too: The structural engineering professor has advised the program for more than 20 years.
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“We incorporate math into it,” Van Den Einde said. “They have to make sketches of their structures. They have to calculate the square footage of their floors and how many floors they have.”
Van Den Einde said the goal of the program, which intentionally recruits klids in underserved communities, is to get young people excited about STEM majors in college.
“We've been reaching out to other school districts and getting students that maybe have never been exposed to coming to a college campus,” Van Den Einde said. “We want to really get them excited about what college life is like to get them to start thinking of possible future career tracks and stuff.”
Wrapped up in the students' structure tests are interviews about their design process, topped off with a campus tour.
UC San Diego is home to the largest outdoor earthquake simulator in the world.
The program’s next test takes place on Thursday. For info about how to get your student involved, email the Seismic Outreach program at scse.ucsd@gmail.com
