Thursday & Friday, September 27 th & 28 th
equipment, to welding, to making a structure out
of spaghetti with our friends from the DOT. It took
a little while for students to figure out what
“ASCE” stood for, but a quick hands-on
experiment on how to filter water with materials
you can gather from your house and yard sparked
interest and drew a crowd, where they all wanted
to learn more.
With the biggest event to date, this year marked
the 10-year anniversary of New Hampshire’s
Construction Career Days. New Hampshire
Construction Career Days (NHCCD) is a two-day
event that exposes New Hampshire high school
students to possible career paths in both the
construction and transportation industries
through hands-on exhibits and educational
resources. Labor unions, construction companies,
school districts, state agencies, trade and
professional organizations collaborate to provide
the students with an introduction to various
aspects of construction. This year, four of our
ASCE-NH board members were volunteers and
hosted a table with a water filtration experiment
to get students excited about Civil Engineering.
Thursday morning hundreds of students were
bused into the Hillsborough County 4-H
Fairgrounds in New Boston, NH where there were
countless displays and activities set up for them
to explore. Everything from operating large heavy
The experiment consisted of a plastic cup with a
hole in the bottom, a piece of paper towel, gravel,
sand, and some “dirty water” (GO RED SOX!)
Students constructed their mini filtration device
with first the paper towel to hold in the filter
media, followed by a layer of sand, and gravel on
top. They then poured in the “dirty water” and
competed with other students on who’s water
came out cleaner.
FILTER
BEFORE
AFTER
Filtration Experiment setup