Of all of the common materials that can be used to teach hands-on engineering concepts, probably the most flexible (no pun intended) and easily available is ordinary computer paper. One of our most successful projects is the Paper Bridge, a task that involves having the students construct a bridge out of the previously mentioned paper. This is the way I do it:
I give the students a short lesson on bridges, after which I give them a little time to come up with a bridge design. The students typically will pick a truss-type bridge, usually because the other two types (Suspension and Arch) do not lend themselves well to paper construction. The key here, depending on the level of student, is to introduce the idea of criteria and constraints. If I was teaching this to 3rd graders, I may not limit their materials, I may only tell them the length of the span they have to cross. When I teach this to 10th and 11th graders, I will typically impose very tight constraints and criteria. In class right now, for instance, my 10th graders are working on a 60cm bridge, using only 10 sheets of paper and masking tape. I've done it with seniors where I've given them 5 sheets of paper, 25cm of tape, and had them build bridges that were 60cm in span as well as 10cm x 10cm in height and width. That takes some thinking.
I also have the students do a presentation about their bridges, as well as a similar bridge somewhere in the world. Again, based on the level of your students you could stop there, or go as far as analyzing the economic impacts to a city if a particular bridge was not there. This could be an in-class discussion, or homework, etc.
The possibilities are almost limitless. We have paper towers, paper testing to investigate material properties, and we can even do papier-mache to look at composite materials (a papier-mache column with spaghetti reinforcements is especially impressive if you do it right.) The US Army Corps of Engineers also has a really good e-book about using manila file folders to construct bridge beams at http://bridgecontest.usma.edu/...
...Which segues me into my next point. The previous project is the no-tech version. You can make it low-tech if you have a couple of computers by using the West Point Bridge Designer software. It's free, so you don't have to worry about coming up with any funding. It is a good tool for kids check the stability of their bridges before they build them, and also where the tension and compression is (you could go into beam buckling and tension equations if you want to, but it is probably best left to high school teachers.) It also runs on just about any computer, from Win98 on up.
The high-tech option is left to those teachers which buy or already have a bridge-testing apparatus (I actually have one, but I prefer to just put the bridge between two tables and hang cupfulls of penies from it.) You can measure the force vs. deflection, and graph it and look at the flexibility of different types of bridges.
Hope you can put this to good use. I'll have some worksheets up in the near future.
TTFN
I give the students a short lesson on bridges, after which I give them a little time to come up with a bridge design. The students typically will pick a truss-type bridge, usually because the other two types (Suspension and Arch) do not lend themselves well to paper construction. The key here, depending on the level of student, is to introduce the idea of criteria and constraints. If I was teaching this to 3rd graders, I may not limit their materials, I may only tell them the length of the span they have to cross. When I teach this to 10th and 11th graders, I will typically impose very tight constraints and criteria. In class right now, for instance, my 10th graders are working on a 60cm bridge, using only 10 sheets of paper and masking tape. I've done it with seniors where I've given them 5 sheets of paper, 25cm of tape, and had them build bridges that were 60cm in span as well as 10cm x 10cm in height and width. That takes some thinking.I also have the students do a presentation about their bridges, as well as a similar bridge somewhere in the world. Again, based on the level of your students you could stop there, or go as far as analyzing the economic impacts to a city if a particular bridge was not there. This could be an in-class discussion, or homework, etc.
The possibilities are almost limitless. We have paper towers, paper testing to investigate material properties, and we can even do papier-mache to look at composite materials (a papier-mache column with spaghetti reinforcements is especially impressive if you do it right.) The US Army Corps of Engineers also has a really good e-book about using manila file folders to construct bridge beams at http://bridgecontest.usma.edu/......Which segues me into my next point. The previous project is the no-tech version. You can make it low-tech if you have a couple of computers by using the West Point Bridge Designer software. It's free, so you don't have to worry about coming up with any funding. It is a good tool for kids check the stability of their bridges before they build them, and also where the tension and compression is (you could go into beam buckling and tension equations if you want to, but it is probably best left to high school teachers.) It also runs on just about any computer, from Win98 on up.
The high-tech option is left to those teachers which buy or already have a bridge-testing apparatus (I actually have one, but I prefer to just put the bridge between two tables and hang cupfulls of penies from it.) You can measure the force vs. deflection, and graph it and look at the flexibility of different types of bridges.
Hope you can put this to good use. I'll have some worksheets up in the near future.
TTFN
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