Suitable for 14-to-19-year olds (secondary and high schools, and college), this article and accompanying activity sheet can be used in the classroom, STEM clubs and at home.

This resource links to KS4 and KS5/Grade 9-10 and Grade 11-12 physics and geography.

It can also be used as a careers resource and links to Gatsby Benchmarks (UK):
Gatsby Benchmark 2: Learning from career and labour market information
Gatsby Benchmark 4: Linking curriculum learning to careers

• This teaching resource explains the work of Professor Nick Hudyma and Grant Goertzen, geotechnical engineers at Boise State University. They are creating artificial rockfalls to understand what happens when rocks fall down slopes, to help engineers design better rockfall protection measures.

• This resource also contains an interview with Nick and Grant and offers an insight into careers in geotechnical engineering.

• The activity sheet provides ‘talking points’ (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) to prompt students to reflect on Nick and Grant’s research and challenges them to design their own engineering experiment to test how the coefficient of restitution changes when different balls are dropped on different landing surfaces.

This resource was first published by Futurum Careers, a free online resource and magazine aimed at encouraging 14-to-19-year-olds worldwide to pursue careers in science, tech, engineering, maths, medicine (STEM) and social sciences, humanities and the arts for people and the economy (SHAPE).

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