This summer I was blessed to be able to participate in a civil engineering class at an engineering college: Innovative materials for infrastructure.
I picked this course because I was, and am , extremely interested in using "green" or earth friendly materials and building styles in civil- engineering. we learned about fly ash and HDPE fibers being used in concrete to strengthen it and increase toughness. we used recycled aggregate in our concrete mixtures and made 3 control group specimens , 3 specimens with fly ash, and 3 with HDPE fibers. then we put it in a machine that crushed them and recorded the strength index, and toughness index, made stress /strain Curves for the specimens and at the end of the college course we had a PowerPoint due and a 29 paged report about concrete uses and innovative materials. My title : The testing of Fly Ash and HDPE fibers as Innovative materials to improve properties of concrete and increase sustainability. This was by far the longest title I've ever written! Being the only 9th grader in that class was tough because the prerequisites were way over my years of acquired knowledge, but I owe the experience and my teachers a lot. Not only did it show me how rigorous College courses are, but it helped me mature and take certain things more seriously. It was no walk in the park, trust me. But in the end I learned a lot, and passed the course with an "A"!
This was an amazing summer.
I picked this course because I was, and am , extremely interested in using "green" or earth friendly materials and building styles in civil- engineering. we learned about fly ash and HDPE fibers being used in concrete to strengthen it and increase toughness. we used recycled aggregate in our concrete mixtures and made 3 control group specimens , 3 specimens with fly ash, and 3 with HDPE fibers. then we put it in a machine that crushed them and recorded the strength index, and toughness index, made stress /strain Curves for the specimens and at the end of the college course we had a PowerPoint due and a 29 paged report about concrete uses and innovative materials. My title : The testing of Fly Ash and HDPE fibers as Innovative materials to improve properties of concrete and increase sustainability. This was by far the longest title I've ever written! Being the only 9th grader in that class was tough because the prerequisites were way over my years of acquired knowledge, but I owe the experience and my teachers a lot. Not only did it show me how rigorous College courses are, but it helped me mature and take certain things more seriously. It was no walk in the park, trust me. But in the end I learned a lot, and passed the course with an "A"!
This was an amazing summer.