TAGGED Hopkins Extreme Materials Institute

What happens to a tank at the micro level when it’s hit by a projectile during combat? Or to the surface of an asteroid as it collides with a planet in space?

The annual Tower of Power contest challenges teams of undergraduates, graduate students, staff members, alumni, and area middle school students to engineer the tallest possible towers from uncooked pasta and marshmallows.

An unlikely collaboration between engineers and artists has yielded inspired creations in both fields.

“A soldier’s job is hard enough,” Beatriz Medeiros, a third-year materials science and engineering student, says. “By improving their armor, we’re hoping to make their jobs a little bit easier.”

Knowing whether an asteroid is a giant hunk of rock or a floating gravel pile—or a mix of the two—will make a big difference in strategies that researchers might devise to prevent one from striking Earth or to drill inside.