Structural Engineers for a Month

It's not every day that high school students get to build a structure and get it tested on an earthquake simulation table. But that's exactly what 23 students from all over California were doing Tuesday, July 30, on the fourth floor of the Structural and Materials Engineering building at the Jacobs School.
They were taking part in COSMOS, an outreach program partially funded by the University of California to encourage students to study science, technology, engineering and math in college.
In the program's earthquake engineering track, students learned cutting-edge techniques to retrofit the structures they built and how to make them damage-proof during an earthquake using sophisticated methods like shear walls, isolator for the structures' base and more.
"I feel like I've been learning a lot about structural engineering," said Kevin Yturralde, 17, a senior at Morse High School in the Paradise Hills neighborhood of San Diego. "The content we learn is important. But it's also a great look into what college life would be."
Some pictures of the fun below: