Poker chips layin lines like dominos on a big brown wooden table. Michael Fulk sat by the table and tried to build a tower with the cards. For Fulk, it was harder than it looked. The card tower collapsed again and again – it couldn’t even stay stable on its first level. Fulk shook his head and put a poker package on the cards.

“It is cheating,” shouted Tomas Kovalcik, sophomore civil engineering major and president of the Syracuse University chapter of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Kovalcik attended the Monday evening event, titled “Playing Card Towers,” at Link Hall. As a part of National Engineers Week, the SU chapter of ASCE hosted a series of social events, such as a construction site tour and a steel bridge competition.

The week’s events aim at letting students get involved with the organization and practice engineering knowledge in daily life.

Participants used 20 cards to try and make the tallest card tower possible. The event let students think about what it takes to build a stable tower in the real world, including elements of engineering strategy such as force, angle and material. Students figured out the final solution to build stable card towers through trial and error.

The event promoted engineering as a part of the annual event, E-week, said Bill Finch, vice president of ASCE and junior civil engineering major.

The event lasted close to an hour. Several attendees gave up the smooth table surface and moved to work on the carpet. Most people who participated built card towers for the first time.

Fulk, a senior civil engineering major, said he previously tried to build a tower with coasters at restaurants, but using cards was harder than he expected.

He said he thinks it’s hard to build a stable tower because the cards are brand new and smooth. He wasn’t the only one who had problems with the cards.

“It is really difficult to build a tower out of cards. I thought it would be easier,” said Wensi Wu, a sophomore civil engineering major who attended the event, “because all I need to do is to make some perfect triangles.”

By showing up at the event, she wanted to encourage other engineers to get involved into the community and establish social networks.

As a member of ASCE, she thinks it’s a professional organization and opens doors to engineering activities.

Said ASCE President Tomas Kovalcik: “We hope people have fun and can apply their knowledge to actually building something, as opposed to what we learn in class.”

Published on February 19, 2013 at 12:33 am

Contact Ruth: jli64@syr.edu