WALTHAM, Mass. – Ever wonder what the cables on Boston’s Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge feels like as it supports the weight of rush-hour traffic?

For sixth graders at the High Rock School in Needham, Mass., these questions and others will be answered when they visit the Waltham, Mass. office (41 Seyon St., Building 1, Suite 500) of engineering firm Simpson Gumpertz & Heger Inc. (SGH) from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Monday, March 15, 2010, for Engineering Day. Students attending the fourth annual Engineering Day will participate in seven interactive sessions that demonstrate engineering principles such as tension, compression, heat transfer, and material strength. Through the use of a hands-on learning environment, students will learn from professional engineers how the mathematics and science they are being taught in school today is applied to the real world.

The day is part of SGH’s participation in the Leadership Initiatives for Teaching and Technology (LIFT2) program, which promotes careers in science, technology, engineering, and math to Massachusetts students. The following is a breakdown of the seven sessions:

Session 1 – Beam Theory and Construction
Presenter: Jennifer Grub, Staff II – Structures
Location: Laboratory

This session will present the concepts of tension and compression as well as idealized modeling of a beam intended for flexural loading. Students will divide into two teams to construct a composite beam using the concepts.

Session 2 – Physical Testing in the Lab
Presenter: Art Davies, Laboratory Manager/Materials
Location: Laboratory

This session will demonstrate the concepts of strength, compression, and stiffness for various materials commonly used in buildings:

• Test samples in tension and compression to reinforce concepts learned in Beam Theory.
• Test a foam beam in bending to illustrate how a beam in flexure has tension forces in the bottom and compression forces in the top.
• Test the composite beams that each team constructs in the Beam Theory session.

Session 3 – Building Science – Heat Flow
Presenter: Peter Babaian, Senior Project Manager
Location: Timoshenko Room

This session will examine the three mechanisms of heat transfer: conduction, radiation, and convection. Each of the principles of conduction and convection will be demonstrated, and the results of the heat transfer will be measured with an infrared camera.

Session 4 – Rope Access, Pulleys, and Cables
Presenter: Susan Knack-Brown, Senior Project Manager
Location: Training Tower

This session will take place at the rope-access training tower, where students will first see a demonstration of how the rope access gear works and how engineers use it. A table with examples of the gear for students to play with will be set up as well.

Session 5 – A Tale of Two “Human” Bridges
Presenter: Paul Kassabian, Senior Staff II – Structures
Location: Heger Conference Room

In this station, students will make two different bridge structures by being the structures themselves. This way, they will feel the loads and hence remember how the structure behaves. Both bridge structures will use tension and compression elements.

Session 6 – Failure Analysis Modeling: The Effects of Fire
Presenter: Kevin LaMalva, Staff I – Fire Safety
Location: Roebling Conference Room

This session will demonstrate computer-modeling techniques that are capable of estimating the effect of fire exposure on a given building environment.

Session 7 – Material Fracture
Presenter: Simon Bellemare, Senior Staff I – Materials and Lisa Witmer, Staff I – Materials
Location: SGH Conference Room

This session will examine material fracture. Students will be shown fractured surfaces of broken parts that SGH has obtained through project work, and parallels will be drawn between material fracture modes such as brittle fracture, ductile fracture, and crack formation to big-picture scenarios, such as broken glass, to which the students can relate.