The Aqualibrium Challenge

Many thanks to the two SIU faculty, Dr. Prabir Kolay and Dr. Sangmin Shin, who came in today to teach the children about Civil Engineering!

Besides the classic spaghetti-and-marshmallow-tower challenge, they also led the Aqualibrium Challenge. This one was new to me! It was really cool.

Basically the idea is that a reservoir of water is placed at a height above a "city" and three plastic containers are arranged to represent different buildings in the city. There are measurements on the sides of the containers.

YouTube video - How to Run the Aqualibrium Challenge

Given different lengths of plastic tubing (two different diameters are permitted, blue and red) and various connectors, can the children work together to set up a system so that when they turn on the valve from the "water tower," water flows at the same rate to each of the "buildings" and the containers each fill up with water to the same level at the same time?

this group used blocks of different heights to adjust the flow of the water through the pipes!

Both teams were successful in the end, and they had a GREAT time!