In a school year when virtual learning has been the buzzword, hands-on projects may be more important and vital than ever.

Lehighton Area High School physics and physical science students took that to heart over the past week by building wooden towers as the culminating exercise of the ending semester.

Leading up to this, students have completed multiple STEAM challenges in which they construct things like clay boats, newspaper towers, parachutes and more.

“We build bridges using K’Nex to learn about structures and structure building,” teacher Douglas Bowman said. “Students have also built a 6-foot Ferris wheel and a working roller coaster. I find that the tower project and other hands-on projects are very rewarding for students.”

For the final project, students draw sketches, then scale blueprints to show their plans for the tower.

“When those are finished,” Bowman said, “they are given balsa wood and glue to construct the tower. In class, we put the tower to the test by loading it up to a maximum of 15 kg, which is about 34 pounds.”

The towers must be constructed entirely of wood and glue, be a minimum of 60 cm tall and support a 5-by-5 cm loading block. The base of the tower must be large enough to stand astride of a 20-by-20 cm square hole.

Towers must meet all of the physical parameters and are then ranked by efficiency, which is the ratio of mass held, compared to the mass of the tower itself.

“In other words, it should be as light as possible and hold as much as possible,” Bowman said.

As of early Wednesday afternoon, in Tier 1, Jackson Zacharias led with a tower mass of 26.48 grams, a load of 17,000 grams and an efficiency of 642. Sean Jensen posted a tower mass of 38.64 grams, a load of 15,000 grams and an efficiency of 388, while Tyler Pickett had a tower mass of 39.29 grams, load of 15,000 grams and efficiency of 382. In Tier 2, Kathleen Lindenmoyer had a tower mass of 7.81 grams, load of 15,000 grams and an efficiency of 1,921, followed by Connor McClure with a 19.14 gram tower mass, 15,000 gram load and 784 efficiency, and Kylee Whiteman with a 25.55 gram tower mass, 15,000 gram load and 587 efficiency.

“We have a few more to test today,” Bowman said Wednesday morning.

Students get small prizes for coming in first, second and third.