Face Mask Engineering
Posted on April 12th, 2020 by Mary Lord
On April 3, U.S. health officials recommended an arts-and-crafts project to thwart the spread of coronavirus: Make a cloth face mask and wear it when you go out in public. Here are some tips and templates for turning T-shirts and other materials into DIY personal protective gear.
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Tags: CDC, coronavirus, Covid-19 protective gear, Design, face mask, maker challenges, sewing, Web Resources
With schools closed during the Covid-19 pandemic, ASEE members and other engineering and technology educators are posting daily design challenges, hosting teacher meetups, and creating ways to engage students in STEM learning at home.
Middle school students measure how much dust, pollen, and other particulate matter is present in the air around them by placing “pollution detectors” in various locations and then examining the captured air particles to determine which places have more or fewer airborne particles. In a companion activity, they engineer methods of removing contaminants.
High school students analyze an assortment of popular inventions to determine their intended beneficiaries as well as who has access to, might be harmed by, and is profiting from them. They then develop and apply class standards for ethical design to re-imagine the devices in a way that would do more good for humanity.
Elementary students discover the entire process that goes into designing rockets, including what real-world decisions engineers must make in such important areas as supplies, ethics, deadlines, and budgets. They also learn about the engineering design process and that the first design is almost never the final design.
A classic engineering challenge involves designing and building devices that can deliver necessary goods to “Toxic Island,” an island that has been quarantined by the World Health Organization due to a nasty outbreak of disease. Working within specific constraints, including limited materials, middle school students follow the engineering design process to design, test, and improve a device that can deliver “medicine” and other vital supplies accurately and quickly without touching either the water or island.
In this lesson from Newton’s Apple, students learn about the engineering behind air bags, including the concepts of momentum and force. They then conduct a related experiment, cushioning the “crash” of a raw egg.
Students in grades 6 to 8 follow the engineering design process while combining mechanical engineering and bioengineering to create a new wristwatch face for a visually impaired student at their school. Teams present their designs to the class and construct prototypes of a watch face that doesn’t rely on sight to tell time.
High school students practice human-centered design by imagining, designing, and prototyping a product to improve classroom accessibility for the visually impaired. The begin by wearing low-vision simulation goggles (or blindfolds) and walking with canes to navigate through a classroom in order to experience what it feels like to be visually impaired. 
