Learning About
SCHOOL SYSTEMS
We bet you miss seeing your friends every day and you probably miss your teachers (we know they miss you!), but do you miss the school building itself? And, no, we don’t mean your desk or your locker or the playground equipment, but the actual building.
A school building is like your house, but a lot, lot bigger. It has bathrooms, it might have a kitchen, it has rooms for the teachers to work, and it has offices. Each of these rooms has doors, lights, walls, and heating and/or air conditioning. Behind the school walls and in rooms you’ve probably never seen, there is a whole system of wires and pipes that makes your school work.
LET’S TAKE A LOOK!
BUILDING A NEW SCHO MASSA
OOL IN
ACHUSETTS
A school in Massachusetts wanted to build an entirely new school next door to their current building. And they wanted to do this while kids were in school! Can you imagine sitting in your classroom and getting to watch an entire school being built right outside your window? Well, we helped make this happen, and one of the things that had to be done was remove this underground storage tank.
Underground storage tanks usually contain oil to heat a school or other building and can be very, very large and heavy. Some of them are so big that if you filled them with milk, you’d need 20,000 gallons of milk!
ELECTRICITY AT A SCHOO RHODE
OL IN
E ISLAND
A school in Rhode Island needed a new generator to bring electricity to their classrooms. Because they decided to move the location of the generator, this meant that new electrical wires had to extend to the new generator and some of these wires needed to be put safely underground.
Generators work by moving a magnet near a wire to create a steady flow of electrons. A very simple way to imagine this is to picture a pump pushing water through a pipe. It’s the same process – you just can’t see electrons like you see water!
HEALTH & SAF AT A SCHO CONNE
FETY OOL IN
ECTICUT
This school in Connecticut wanted to expand. So our Environmental Engineers and Specialists had to make sure it was safe for them to do so.
They looked under the floors to make sure there were no dangerous chemicals and they set up ways to make sure that the air was safe while the cleaning and expansion took
looking under the floors
place. We always want to ensure the health and safety of those doing the hard work of making new schools or fixing up older schools! checking the air
We hope you enjoyed learning about School Systems with