Highway engineers use chocolate to teach Winter Garden students how to create roads

WINTER GARDEN, Fla. – Florida Turnpike engineers recently gave Tildenville Elementary School students a sweet lesson in traffic infrastructure by helping them create mini-roads from chocolate.

The event was an effort to teach the students about science, technology, engineering and math-related careers.

 Fifth-grade student Grace Berquist explained how they built their chocolate infrastructure.

"So you have to have rocks of all different sizes, and then you put them together and you add like a binder and it binds it all together," Grace said.
 
Josiah Banet was among the engineers working with the students.
 
"I'm always intrigued when they know the road or a project I've worked on. That's always satisfying," he said.
 
He tells News 6 the idea of teaching students about engineering through food goes back to the '90s. Through the concept of no-bake cookies, students create roadways using chocolate as the binder or asphalt, and ingredients like sugar, oats and coconut as the aggregates. Once students mix the ingredients, they then roll it between pieces of wax paper. And yes, students did get to eat their creations.
 
"Chocolate is a delicious food, and asphalt you can't eat," said student Tye Shettleworth.
 
Grace said she enjoyed learning how engineers make the world a safer place.
 
"They like help with making the world better and making the environment better and stuff like that," she said.