O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory Outreach Program

The wave lab offers year round tours to groups of students 4th grade and older.  These tours are designed around the State of Oregon Teaching standards for science, engineering and career awareness.  The laboratory tours have four specific goals for participants to increase their awareness of:

  1. Tsunamis and coastal hazards
  2. College preparedness
  3. Engineering career awareness
  4. Research and the research process

Tours include a 20 minute power point presentation focusing on the tour goals, a brief wave demonstration in our mini-flume and a guided tour of our facility.  These tours typically last 45 minutes.  Group size is limited to 30 to 35 students maximum per tour and a maximum of 4 tours per day.  

The mini-flume Lego tsunami challenge hands on activity can be added to the tour.  In this activity pairs of students are challenged to protect a Lego person from a tsunami in our mini-flume.  The primary goals of the Lego-Tsunami Challenge are to highlight the engineering design cycle and the societal benefit of coastal engineering.   This activity was designed for elementary students, but can be effective with enthusiastic older students.