Activity: Airbags and Collisions
Posted on February 1st, 2020 by ASEE
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.
Filed under: Class Activities, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12 | Comments Off on Activity: Airbags and Collisions
Tags: Automotive engineering, Class Activities, design constraints, Egg drop, Ethics in engineering, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Safety engineering
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.
To help teachers and students as young as six explore the rewarding fields of computer science and engineering, eGFI has compiled this list of activities, free online courses, computer animations, and other resources.
Middle school students learn the concept of dead reckoning by using vectors to plot a course based on a time and speed, then correct their positions with vectors representing winds and currents. Includes a link to related activities on navigation and creating nautical charts.
Middle school students take on the role of marine biologists to investigate how sharks move in three-dimensional space (3-D). Understanding the mathematics behind shark movement will inform the design of a prototype joystick for a robotic exploration shark used to collect oceanic data.
Students in grades 6 to 8 use water balloons and string to understand how the force of gravity between two objects and the velocity of a spacecraft can balance to form an orbit. They see that when the velocity becomes too great for gravity to hold the spacecraft in orbit, the object escapes the orbit and travels further away from the planet.
Students in grades 4 to 9 learn about projectile motion by designing, building, and testing a machine that can kick a Ping-Pong ball into a cup lying on its side 12 inches away.
Students in grades 6 to 8 apply their knowledge about mountains and rocks to transportation engineering to develop a model mountain tunnel from that simulates the principles behind real-life engineering design. Teams design and create model tunnels through a clay mountain, working within design constraints and testing for success; the tunnels must meet specific design requirements and withstand a certain load.
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo mission to the moon, NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility Visitor Center is hosting an art contest for preK-12 students. Register by June 1 and submit artwork by June 15, 2019. Winning artwork will be displayed at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility Visitor Center.
