91ÊÓÆµ

Engineering Innovation

Students from our Ventura County high schools get a taste of college in a fun-filled summer session at 91ÊÓÆµ.
Students earn college credits and learn engineering skills through structured, hands-on activities such as:

  • Design and build a better mousetrap
  • Measure the height of the Bell Tower remotely
  • Design a digital circuit to control a robotic toy car
  • Distill ethanol
  • Propose a new medical device.

As a highlight of the summer experience, the students typically design, build and test a bridge built from spaghetti. They test the structural properties of dry spaghetti and learn to scale their results to higher loads. In 2008 the 91ÊÓÆµ team was pitted against a team from UCSB, and won significantly. The winning bridge was 52 cm long with a mass of 0.236 kg, and held water bottles with a combined mass of 23 kg before breaking, as shown in the video.

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