Toy Project Proposal: Designing a Water Dam
39-245: Group #7 Project #3
M. Brent Haick, Nate Rolfes, Vincent Peritpierre
1.What is the engineering principle that the children will learn?
Children will learn three things from this project:
force as caused by fluids, properties of structural reinforcement, and
the concept of "failing quickly." The first two are obviously basic premises
of engineering. The third is a more revolutionary concept introduced in
39-245. It means that it is better to have a design fail quickly, and in
turn learn quickly how to fix it, than to get far along in the design process
without testing and find out that your concept is faulty.
2.What is the activity?
The basic concept behind our idea is the design
and manufacture of a water dam. We will allow children to build dams using
three basic formats. One will be with Legos (c). The other two will be
based making the walls of the dam curved, which will either increase or
decrease the maximum amount of stress the dam can withstand.
3.What age group is the activity designed for?
This activity is probably appropriate for any child
old enough not to eat the building blocks. This would cut the age range
off at about 8 years. It would also, of course, be fun for adults, too.
4.What will the children do and how will they learn by doing your activity?
The children will build a damn out of the given
building blocks. They will have several choices to make. The first will
be which basic platform to use (straight blocks, curved towards water flow,
or curved away from water flow). The strongest design would be to use blocks
which are curved towards the flow of water.
The second choice will be how to organize the structure.
The strongest design (as we know from out course work in engineering) would
be one with a wide base which gets thinner as height increases. This is
because water pressure increases with depth.
5.What will be in the activity box? If appropriate, include a sketch
of the activity.
6.How does your activity meet the requirements given above?
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It engages children in engineering activities through designing dam structures.
To do this, the children must work in a group (aka, cooperate with one
another) and put the blocks together to form the structures.
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This project will appeal to many types of children. It will appeal to the
destructive/heroic type, because they will potentially get to drown/save
a town. It will also appeal to the constructive type, because they will
be able to build with blocks.
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This activity will appeal to many children at a time, since it requires
many hands to build the town and dam in any convenient amount of time.
In order to engage mass amounts of munchkins, more than one dam should
be built.
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Finally, the entire apparatus should be about 1' * 1' * 4', so it should
be able to fit in a compact car. (Barely)