UMD Undergrad First to Perform Drop Test on Building Material

Test dropped 250 lbs on material from a height of one foot.

DULUTH, Minn.- For the first time at UMD, an undergraduate student measured the resilience of a material using a drop tower test.

As part of his Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP), senior Tom DeMars dropped 250 lbs on material sent in from a building company, from a height of one foot.

It measures how well the material handles under different impacts.

“If you’re in somewhere with really high winds where say like a Hurricane or Tornado area because these are all pretty common building materials, it’d be really useful to know what material would be best for like a high impact force,” DeMars said.

The next step for DeMars is to analyze the data from the experiment.