Delicious 'roads' attract crowd

Candy and treats aren’t necessarily the first things that come to mind when understanding how engineers design our roadways, but they were a definite crowd-pleaser during the March 8–9 Engineering Open House, where University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering graduate students used goodies to demonstrate the construction of roadway layers. 

“We can entertain, feed, and teach all at the same time,” said Egemen Okte, doctoral student. “As simple as that sounds, I love it!”

Using real pavement construction materials, geometrical samples, posters, and delicious sweet treats, graduate student volunteers shared the importance of pavement and its role in our everyday lives.

Kiddos and their parents gobbled up the ICT showcase, which included a layered pavement structure made from graham cracker “subgrade,” candy-coated chocolate resembling aggregates, chocolate puff “recycled asphalt concrete,” ” and chocolate syrup made the perfect “asphalt binder.”

“EOH provides me a platform to interact with people from different age groups and backgrounds and allows me to share my knowledge on roads with them,” said Punit Singhvi, a doctoral student. “The edible pavement is one of my favorites as it explains the fundamentals of pavement structure to the diverse audience in a very simple way.”

The annual two-day event featured exciting exhibits and captivating competitions that highlighted the talent and ingenuity of the UIUC graduate students.

More than 25,000 visitors, of which included approximately 600 high schools, attended the open house, where they experienced an atmosphere of innovation and creativity at UIUC campus.

The graduate students displayed the latest cutting-edge transportation research conducted at ICT, including the recently developed “Illinois Flexibility Index Test (I-FIT)” which is used to predict the cracking performance of asphalt mixtures as well as the state of art aging device, called TEAGE, which has a capability to simulate realistic asphalt aging. The students shared the role of sustainability in decision making for selection of various pavement applications. They talked about the future implications on our pavements with the increase in autonomous and connected vehicles.

Angeli Gamez, a doctoral candidate, said the spread was too good to pass up for many attendees.

“At first, people get curious because we have an array of food on the table, but we inspire learning and our discussion from the first table that has asphalt concrete and asphalt binder samples so that they can have a better appreciation why we have the pavement design station,” she said. “It’s quite fulfilling to teach the basic overview of the pavement system.”