Join MIT graduate students in a hands-on wave flume demonstration to learn more about how water waves interact with natural and man-made features near the coast. You will have the opportunity to design your own shoreline adaptation, choosing from a kit-of-parts that includes coastal defense measures from seagrass and oyster gabions (i.e., cages) to traditional seawalls. Pieces can be arranged in countless ways, allowing us to test various hypotheses, e.g. sparse vegetation vs. dense, or oyster gabion + vegetation vs. seawall as we work together to develop not only a greater physical intuition of water wave mechanics, but also an understanding of how various physical, ecological, and social processes in coastal regions are impacted by climate change. Students will meet teachers at 66-154 and be escorted to the new Learning Labs at the MIT Museum Building (just a 3-minute walk).

Learn about the importance of water filtration by making your own water filter out of household materials! We will test our water filters and discuss how they work, and learn about the history of water treatment and how we treat water today to make it safe for everyone to use. Students will meet teachers at 66-154 and be escorted to the new Learning Labs at the MIT Museum Building (just a 3-minute walk).