Watercrafts

I apologize for going out of order in describing the club's activities, but I just couldn't contain my excitement for the innovative ideas my students had for the Watercraft challenge I posed to them last Monday. The students were given a "budget" of $50 to spend on specific materials below.

Each item was also given a specific cost.

5 (five) straws - $10

12 (twelve) inches duct tape - $5

1 (one) paper cup - $5

10 (ten) inches of Saran wrap - $5

Then after explaining the situation, I asked if they could (in groups) design a watercraft to fit within a specified bin (pictures to come later) that can hold 25 pennies, 50 pennies, 100 pennies or 150 pennies. Furthermore, I told them that the group that could hold the most pennies and was built with the least amount of money would win extra prize candy.

Since this is an engineering club, I asked if they could try to follow the beloved design process and noticed interesting ideas at the brainstorming stage.

After trying to settle a couple of disagreements within groups (I usually assign groups to split friends up and mix 7th and 8th graders, but sometimes they refuse to work with one another) and trying to convince my two volunteers that they were supposed to be the adults (I found them at the supplies table trying to build their own Watercrafts), the students came up with some very innovative ideas.

This group (above) realized after the first round of testing that their craft required very careful placement of the pennies, or it would flip over.

This group (above) started with this craft flipped over -- when I told them that I would not be taking the pennies out of the Ziploc bags, they returned back to their table to see if they could improve their design. When they came back for the second round of testing, I found their craft flipped over (it worked too!).

I believe that this activity was definitely my best work -- it was adapted from DesignSquad shown on PBS (the material list was directly from the website), but after sleeping on it, I decided to make it more realistic by adding a material/monetary constraint. After all, that is the reality of engineering today.

More to come soon!