Field Trips!

A Studious Day of Studies

Hello from the beautiful and sunny Florence Italy, this is one of your three seniors on the trip, Grant Gunderson. After spending so much time editing everyone’s writing, it’s finally my turn to paint you a picture with my own words.

I would love to be able to tell you that the temperatures are in the 80’s and 90’s and that we are all getting tan but, just like America its winter over here as well. After a hectic couple of days leaving Rome and heading off to tour Pompeii, we got a chance to visit one of Europe’s most impressive and well renowned facilities for structural engineering. The university sits just outside of the city of Naples and has multiple campuses. If you can believe it there is 84 thousand students that attend the university. The student’s study everything from surgery and medical careers all the way to structural and environment engineering. In total the school also has 5000 paid staff and was founded back in the year 1224 when it became one of the first universities in the country Italy and now to this day remains the largest university in the country.

Upon arrival to the campus we were greeted by staff and then sat down for our 2.5 hour long 3-part lecture with some of the professors who worked at the university. The first of the professors was named Dr. R. Landolfo. He presented to us on the background of the school itself as well as general thoughts and purposes of engineers who worked in Italy. He gave us great insight into a common idea that many Italian engineers share, to preserve the past and its beauty but work towards improving the future around it. Something interesting we learned is that the school does accept international students to attend but, that most of the students who come from countries outside of Italy are either Japanese, Chinese, Iranian, or residents of another middle eastern country such as Pakistan. If you would like to learn more about him feel free to check out the bottom of the post for a link where I will be posting bios for all the speakers we saw today. The second speaker was an 80-year-old man who was presenting to us on the magic behind the leaning tower of Pisa. He had worked since the 50’s on an engineer on Italy’s state projects to preserve the tourist attracting tower. From being an intern in his earlier days to heading a group of engineers, he told us stories of the many different tactics used to keep the tower vertical. We learned that the tower is always in constant motion falling towards the ground. The catch is that it moves at such a small rate that the human eye could not even notice. In all the tower weights right around 14,500 tons and stands at a total height of about 58 meters tall or 190 feet. We learned ways that Engineers have been able to combat the tilt of the tower by changing the soil around the base of the tower to altering the tower into a shape much like a banana to help balance out the loads created from gravity. It was amazing to get to hear the history of the tower directly from someone who had made the tower his life’s work. Our final presenter was Dr. Federico M. Mazzolani and he was presenting to us about his time as a structural engineer and his work to help maintain and restore different historical buildings around Europe and parts of Asia. Mainly, he and his colleagues would recreate smaller scale models of these ancient buildings and then test them against the damages of earthquakes using a machine called shaking tables. Using large amounts of power and force these tables help to replicate the forces experienced during earthquakes so engineers to can test their designs against the power of mother nature. Dr. M spoke of buildings he had worked at from France to Italy and even Iran and the middle east. To finish up our day at the university we received a tour of their laboratory and the many pieces of equipment they for testing different materials. We might have even lost a few people as the civil Engineer in them took over and they wandered off in awe of the monumental and powerful machines.

As of now everyone is starting to see the finish line in sight but, we are all happy healthy and enjoying every second of this trip. Thanks to everyone for following along and we will see you next in Florence! Ciao!