Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER)

Shake Table Competitions for K-12 Students

It is important for students in grades K-12 to understand the career opportunities available to them in science and engineering and for them to see higher education as the path to these opportunities. A great example of outreach that makes this understanding a reality is the UC-Irvine "Learning with LEGOs" competition. Led by Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center (PEER) faculty members Tara Hutchinson and Gerry Pardoen, UC-Irvine invites hundreds of K-12 students from the inner city to participate in a shake table competition using LEGOs.

Along with the competition, the students are taught earthquake engineering basics and are shown that these are careers open to them through higher education. UC-Irvine's program has spawned a smaller competition at UC-San Diego and UC-Berkeley, as well as an Undergraduate Shake Table Competition through PEER run by the center's Student Leadership Council.

To learn more about this topic:
Visit the PEER education web site at http://peer.ucsd.edu/k12.html. For a video segment shown on UCSD-TV on the PEER shake table competitions and their impact on K-12 education, see http://peer.ucsd.edu.

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K-12 students and their LEGO structures anxiously
await the "UC rumble".

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Last modified: February 18, 2005