BRUNSWICK

St. John’s Catholic School students got an eyeful of earthquakes on Tuesday.

Middle school science teacher Deb Johnson led her eighth grade students in the 3rd annual Earthquake Shake Table Demonstration.

Students were tasked with building structures — using foam board, marshmallows, straws, twine, tape, paperclips and pipe cleaners — with the goal of building creations that could withstand large amounts of shaking and pressure, like an earthquake.

The project requirements were numerous: Students had to work within a budget, the structures had to meet certain height requirements, the structures had to have a minimum number of floors and there were specific guidelines regarding the height of the floors.

For the demonstration, each structure was clamped to a “shake table” built by Johnson’s husband, Randy. Sand bags — which represented people and furniture, and weighing 250 grams each — were placed on the floors of the structures. The experiment was conducted at both slow and fast speeds and demonstrated the strength of the students’ structure designs under simulated conditions of an earthquake, and whether or not the sandbags stayed in the structure.

All students did exceptionally well, with the structures of Clare MacDonald and Justina Gilman taking on the least damage.

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