WHAT IS THE ENGINEERING PRINCIPLE THAT THE CHILDREN WILL LEARN?

We hope that through our activity the kids involved will learn many engineering priciples. Among these are:

• Projectile motion
• newton's laws
• deformation due to forces on an object
• conservation of energy
• conservation of momentum

WHAT IS THE ACTIVITY?

Our activity incvolves launching a clay figure into the air towards a wall. More specifically, we will have some clay figures with us and we will distribute them along with some other supplies to each group of kids. Among the supplies will be an empty soda bottle (one liter), a specified amount of rocks, toliet paper, foam, paper towels, packing popcorn, cotton balls, and other various items. The idea is to stick the clay figure into the empty soda bottle and surround him with these different materials. The materials used (if any at all) are completely up to the kids. After about 15 to 20 minutes of design their capsuls we will then gather the little kiddies up for a little compatition. The goal is to have as little change (deformation) in the clay figure as possible after it is flown through the air and into a wall. To be fair to everyone we will build our own launcher in which all the clay figures will be shot from. We will have a point sheet made out listing different areas that points can be given or taken away. Once these scores have been tallied then we will anounce the winner and gather everyone around to talk about what they learned, what they would do different if they were to do this again and so on.

WHAT AGE GROUP IS THIS ACTIVITY DESIGNED FOR?

This activity was created for 5th graders. It is not restricted to this grade level though. It's probably not a good activity for children under this age but it can definately be done with older children.

WHAT WILL THE CHILDREN DO AND HOW WILL THEY LEARN BY DOING OUR ACTIVITY?

As we stated earlier, the kids will make these capsols from which their clay characters will be air-born, using a variety of materials. When doing this the kids will need to think about what will keep the clay man safe, what happens if the capsol is really heavy, how about really light, and things like this. It is our intention that they will also learn how they can learn from other peoples idea's, how important it is to work together when you are in a group, and how things don't always work the way that you thought they would.

WHAT WILL BE IN THE ACTIVITY BOX?

The activity box will include the clay figures, all the different materials used in the activity including the launcer and maybe some candy for the kids for all their hard work.

HOW WILL THIS ACTIVITY TEACH THE KIDS AND MEET THE REQUIREMENTS OF THE PROJECT?

Well, through this activity the kids will learn to work together and decide on a final design that they all agree upon, enjoy the excitment of class competitions, enjoy learning and realize that learning about new things doesn't have to be boring, and also they will be introduced to many different aspects of engineering. This activity will ideally engage all types of kids ranging fom those who may just want to smash their clay man into the wall to see how bad he can be to destroyed to those who will try their hardest not to destroy the clay man. This activity is pretty safe (with the exception of maybe the rocks) and is suitable for an indoor classroom. There isn't really that much to carry along when doing this experiment because most of the materials can be condensed and put inside of other material (i.e. in the soda bottles).