Project POSIT
Oakland Teachers Program
June 22, 2007

Sixty-seven teachers from the Oakland Unified School District participating in Project Posit (Partnership for Oakland Science Inquiry and Teaching) came to the Earthquake Engineering Research Center as a part of their two-week summer institute. After a lecture by Professor Sitar on Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering, they came to EERC at the Richmond Field Station.
	Professor Moehle gave them a lecture on Structural Engineering with an emphasis on earthquakes. He demonstrated how a material (chalk) may have significant strength when loaded vertically (axial force) but when exposed to horizontal forces such as the shaking in an earthquake (shear force), it failed with a minimal amount of force.
The teachers built small structures out of Knex or poster paper, which were to be tested on a small shake table in the laboratory. Building this type of structure will be part of our K-12 program.
	The structures were attached to the small shake table and subjected to groiund shaking movements. Here, Professor Sitar is demonstrating the effect of frequency of ground motion on structural response.
The teachers went on a tour of the nees@berkeley Equipment Site and the EERC Shaking Table Laboratory. Professor Stojadinovic described the function of the facility and the research being done in it and the teachers were able to view the equipment used to perform the research.