Teaching Coordinator Adriaan Louw
Choosing the right material is as important in clothing as it is in megastructures. The idea of picking the best material for the job, while keeping in mind cost, availability, and reasonability is the focus of the grade 6 Spring projects. For the midterm, students design a polymer. For the final, they build a bridge.
Midterm Project: Super Sneakers
Have you ever wondered why some shoes are really comfortable and others make your life a living hell, hurting your feet, knees, hips, and even back? Well… the grade six students did not. Not at first, at least. The Super Sneakers project is designed to teach students about chemistry under the guise of designing appropriate sports shoes.
With their interest piqued it’s time to look into the chemistry behind the various materials used in shoes and why they’re chosen. This also serves as the introduction to the world of polymers, the surprising versatility of polymers, and finally the ways in which they are manipulated in various fields to get various results, even as shoes.
Forearmed with this knowledge, students are tasked with the ultimate goal of the project, to create a polymer that would be suitable in a sports shoe. This polymer must meet the needs of the sport/activity they choose. An example design constraint might be that the aim is to make a polymer that can absorb shock well and spring back to its original shape to help basketball players protect their knees and hips. They might think outside the box, and design a robust and resilient polymer that can act as the outer layer of a heavy duty hiking shoe. Regardless of the choices though, they must prepare a polymer using simple ingredients, and then test it against their design constraints.
Final Project: Building Bridges
Taiwan is an island with hills, mountains, and rivers, and bridges are a key part of the transport network. This project aims to highlight how engineering is part of everyday life, and more importantly, makes everyday life possible.During this project students are tasked early on to observe bridges that they pass on the way home, and look out for other bridge like structures in the area.
They take this knowledge into lessons where they learn about appropriate support, shapes that affect strength, and the important forces that act on bridges – compression and tension. They combine all this experience and a set of materials into designing and building their own bridge models, which will promptly be destroyed by vigorous load testing. While it is an impressive end to a very hands on project, it also serves to reinforce earlier lessons about how design choices can impact the outcome.
With this, and with the rubble of bridges in their wake, students finish off the project and present what they have learned, ultimately having a better understanding of how choices in the engineering process can dramatically affect the final product and with a new appreciation for the thought and engineering that makes their lives easier and safer.