On Saturday, February 22, 2014 a group of DLZ Columbus employees spent their morning encouraging students to learn more about the world of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM).  Organized by the ASCE Central Ohio Section Younger Member Group, the STEM Expo is an educational outreach event that features hands-on, interactive activities for students in grades K-8 that are sponsored by local companies in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Math fields. The event also featured special exhibits from The Ohio State University.

The DLZ group’s interactive activity was called “Science Friction” and helped students learn more about the role friction plays in daily life. In the first part of the activity, students attempted to pull apart paperback books which have been woven together one page at a time without glue. In the second part of the activity, students assisted in constructing a scaled down model of an embankment without any reinforcement, then two models with reinforcement (newspaper strips and geogrids).  Once completed, each model was tested with the weight of a student to see if the reinforcement worked. The activities were designed to demonstrate how Engineers are often asked to design bridges and roadways on top of each other and in confined areas and how incorporating friction into the design, through MSE walls, can make these structures stable and safe for the traffic they support.