Students Learn about Vibrations and Concrete during JTC Tour

Students and their chaperones from the Midtown-Metro Achievement Centers recently toured our Janney Technical Center (JTC).

Mainly high school freshmen and sophomores were welcomed by JTC Regional Director and structural engineer Matt Gries, who provided an introduction to and overview of WJE, the JTC, and future career opportunities. Next, the students, divided into three smaller groups, visited the instrumentation lab, concrete lab, and petrography lab.

In the instrumentation lab, Unit Manager and structural engineer Mohamed ElBatanouny explained the importance of measuring temperature, wind speed, vibrations, and more to see how structures respond under certain conditions. While in the hallway outside the lab, he asked a student to tap on the glass to see how the vibrations were measured on a screen inside. He also asked students to clap.

“It was cool when we clapped and the screen measured the waves,” one student said.

Materials engineer Elizabeth Wagner welcomed everyone to the concrete lab, where she explained that her colleagues were engaged in understanding how to make the strongest, most durable concrete for projects. Students handled materials that could be mixed into concrete, such as gypsum and fly ash. Then, petrographer Corrie Piehowski showed students the Thermotron and explained how it can simulate environmental exposure for materials before she led the students through other areas.

Petrographer Daniela Mauro explained how concrete could be cut to half the thickness of a human hair in the petrography lab. There, the teenagers felt concrete so light it could float on water and felt an extremely heavy piece used in drawbridges.

Tour guides led each group through the stations, explaining additional labs and capabilities along the way. The students watched the big finale in the structural lab: a #8 grade 60 rebar was pulled in tension in the Tinius Olsen machine until failure at 75 kips. Following the finale, the students enjoyed lunch and a Q&A session with JTC staff.

Since the Midtown Center and Metro Achievement Center opened their doors in 1965 and 1985, respectively, nearly 22,000 students have benefited from more than 14.5 million hours of academic tutoring and virtue development.