Skimmer Challenge
The Skimmer Challenge has been designed to supplement the curriculum of an elementary (4-6) science or math teacher. Like all AWIM challenges, the Skimmer Challenge will join together teachers, students, and industry volunteers in an exploration of physical science while addressing essential mathematic and scientific concepts and skills.
In the Skimmer Challenge, students are introduced to a model Skimmer presented by the fictitious toy company Earth Toy Designs, whose specialty is making toys out of recycled or recyclable materials. The design of the toy is incomplete and suggestions for variations on this toy are requested from student design teams. These teams provide many of the services required for the toy product to move to the next stage of development. They will test the model with different sails to understand how sail characteristics affect the way it moves, create other designs and test them, and then give a formal presentation of their final skimmer designs.
The Skimmer Challenge has been designed to supplement the curriculum of an elementary (4-6) science or math teacher. Like all AWIM challenges, the Skimmer Challenge will join together teachers, students, and industry volunteers in an exploration of physical science while addressing essential mathematic and scientific concepts and skills.
In the Skimmer Challenge, students are introduced to a model Skimmer presented by the fictitious toy company Earth Toy Designs, whose specialty is making toys out of recycled or recyclable materials. The design of the toy is incomplete and suggestions for variations on this toy are requested from student design teams. These teams provide many of the services required for the toy product to move to the next stage of development. They will test the model with different sails to understand how sail characteristics affect the way it moves, create other designs and test them, and then give a formal presentation of their final skimmer designs.
Students acquire and then apply their knowledge of Skimmer performance to create an interesting toy. Students may choose to make Skimmers that sail fast or slow, turn or go straight. The sails may be functional, artistic, or even whimsical. In designing these new sails, students have control of the shape, size, balance of the sail, and the weight and balance of the Skimmer.
Students working on this design challenge find that there is no one solution to any particular problem. There are many ways to configure the sail so that the Skimmer travels a great distance, does a turn, or carries a load. However, to sort through all the design factors and create a design for a particular purpose, students will need an understanding of how each factor affects performance. This understanding—based on their hands-on experimentation, gathering and understanding experimental data, and classroom discussions - sets the stage for student teams to create and refine their own skimmer designs.
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Students receive a letter from EarthToy Designs, Inc., a fictitious toy company, challenging them to design a toy "skimmer." This sets the context for their engineering design experience. First, students read the letter that explains the scope of the design task with which they will be engaged in the unit. Then they see a demonstration of a prototype that gives them an idea of how a skimmer looks and behaves.
Lesson 2 - Building The Skimmer (90 min)Students join a design team and, with their team, build a skimmer in three steps. First, they build a hull using the Skimmer Hull Pattern and the instructions on Building the Skimmer Hull. Next, they make a stand to hold the skimmer's sail using a paper clip and the instructions on Making a Sail Stand. Finally, they attach a 3 x 5 index-card sail to a drinking straw mast and mount the mast on the skimmer sail stand. Design teams then test this skimmer in front of a fan and record data on its performance in their new Team Design Log.
Lesson 3 - Our First Sail Designs (90 min)As a challenge pretest, each student designs a sail and writes down his or her thinking for the design. Design teams meet to share their thinking and then, as a group, determine a shape they think would make their first sail design a good one. The initial focus is on making the skimmer go far and straight. They draw the sail on oaktag, cut it out, trace it on a sheet of graph paper, determine its area, and attach the sail to their skimmer. They also learn how to use the Skimmer Test Log to record their test results. Each team then tests its skimmer's performance using the log to record data on each sail design.
Lesson 4 - Sharing Our First Results (45 min)Design teams share their test results and observations on their preliminary sail designs. The class looks for patterns in the relationship of sail characteristics, including shape, area, and location on the skimmer, and how these affect the distance the skimmer travels. Which characteristics seem to be related to the skimmer traveling far and straight? Which characteristics seem to be related to traveling a shorter distance? The class discusses whether there is a way to determine how the different sail characteristics account for the performance observed. How do the characteristics of sail size, shape, height, placement on the hull, or other characteristics the class may determine, interact to determine a skimmer's performance?
Lesson 5 - Deciding What to Test (45 min)In this activity, students discuss how they might carry out experiments to test each of the skimmer characteristics on the list they made in Activity 4, Sharing Our First Results.
Lesson 6 - Testing Sails (90 min)To begin testing skimmer sails, all design teams test the characteristics of sail area and sail shape. After the class performs these tests, design teams select the tests they want to perform from the list of proposed tests the class made in Activity 5, Deciding What to Test.
Lesson 7 - What We've Learned About Sails (90 min)As a class, students discuss the results obtained from the design teams' testing and use test data to draw conclusions. They make a chart of the results that indicate the settings or features that resulted in the longest and straightest performance, as well as any features that helped the skimmer turn reliably. They then discuss their hypotheses about the forces that cause the characteristics to have the effects they discovered.
Lesson 8 - Designing a Skimmer (45 min)In this activity, student design teams use the information from their discussion in Activity 7, What We've Learned About Sails, to design a sail that they think will meet the requirements given by the letter from Earth Toy Designs. On a Skimmer Design sheet, they state the performance the team wants its skimmer to have, draw the sail they plan to use, and to describe why they think these characteristics will meet their performance objectives.
Lesson 9 - Building and Testing a Skimmer (90 min)Design teams make a skimmer sail, or add other features, based on the Skimmer Design sheets they completed in Activity 8, Designing a Skimmer. They test their models and make adjustments to their designs as needed. They decorate the skimmers based on the drawings they made on their Skimmer Design sheets. Teams begin to plan their presentations of their skimmer prototype.
Lesson 10 - Skimmer Presentations (45 min)In this activity, student design teams share their final skimmer designs with the class and, if possible, invited guests. Teams will present their Skimmer Design sheets and test results. Each team demonstrates its model to show how well it meets the Skimmer Design specifications. The class discusses the relationship between the design of the models and their performance. Students then reflect on how their understanding of the skimmer has grown since they began the challenge.
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JetToy Challenge
In the JetToy Challenge, a fictitious toy company called EarthToy Designs presents the challenge in the form of a letter. The company wants students to provide a variety of interesting designs for a new line of balloon-powered vehicles made from inexpensive, common materials that will appeal to other children. Working in design teams, students will build and test model JetToys using different nozzles, and collect and analyze data to understand the effect of nozzle size on the performance of the toys. They will create other designs and test them, then give a formal presentation of their final JetToy designs.
In the JetToy Challenge, a fictitious toy company called EarthToy Designs presents the challenge in the form of a letter. The company wants students to provide a variety of interesting designs for a new line of balloon-powered vehicles made from inexpensive, common materials that will appeal to other children. Working in design teams, students will build and test model JetToys using different nozzles, and collect and analyze data to understand the effect of nozzle size on the performance of the toys. They will create other designs and test them, then give a formal presentation of their final JetToy designs.
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Students receive a letter from a fictitious toy company inviting them to create different JetToys using simple materials. Students discuss the requirements described in a letter from EarthToy Designs. They are introduced to the engineering design process and the scope of this design challenge: to build a JetToy, to figure out how it works in order to predict its behavior, and to use this knowledge to design customized JetToys that meet specific performance characteristics and design goals.
Lesson 2 - Building and Testing the JetToy Chassis (90 min)Students are organized into design teams that they will work in for the duration of the project. Each team receives a design log that it will use to record its work. Teams construct a chassis. After adding wheels and axles, they test their models by rolling them down a ramp and observing their performance. Students then modify and test the vehicles until they roll straight and can go a specified minimum distance.
Lesson 3 - Adding the Balloon Motor (90 min)Students assemble a balloon motor and add it to the chassis they built in Activity 2. The balloon motor consists of a short piece of tubing (the nozzle) fastened inside the neck of a balloon by a rubber band. Students then do informal experiments with the balloon-powered vehicle and observe its behavior. They come across several engineering issues concerning the mounting of the balloon motor, such as how best to attach the nozzle to the vehicle and how to keep the balloon from flopping around or onto the wheels. Students are encouraged to add features that solve these problems and improve the vehicle's ability to travel straight and far. These new features are created from simple materials: poster board, masking tape, and straws. Students record their ideas and solutions and note the changes in performance. They repeat this modify-and-test cycle with the goal of designing vehicles that roll straight and can go a specified minimum distance.
Lesson 4 - Sharing First Results (45 min)Students share the data and experiences they have collected from their experiments so far. They talk about what makes a vehicle roll straight and smoothly. They share their ideas for solving problems they had in mounting the balloon motor and making their vehicles roll well. They learn what physical phenomena are involved and how to express their ideas using the correct scientific terminology. The basic properties they are dealing with include forces, friction, and inertia. An object moves because a force acts on it. The forces they have observed are gravity (rolling down the ramp) and air pressure (from the balloon motor). Friction is another force which acts to resist motion and use up energy it slows down all moving things. Students have learned that they can control friction by keeping parts from rubbing against each other. Inertia is the physical property that keeps an object moving after the accelerating force is gone, as when the chassis continues to roll past the ramp, or after the balloon has deflated.
Lesson 5 - Revising the Vehicle (45 min)Students revise their JetToys to incorporate features that seemed to be successful when tested and discussed in previous sessions. The new features will be made from the same materials as before: poster board, tape, straws, and paper clips.
Students assemble balloon motors in three sizes and make weights out of stacks of pennies, then experiment informally with them. Based on their observations of the vehicle's performance, they will begin to get a sense of the effects of different balloon motors and added weight.
The goal of revising the JetToy is to create a vehicle that is sturdy enough to be used for formal experimentation Lesson 6 - Designing Experiments (45 min)
Students share their hypotheses about factors that influence performance of the JetToys. They make lists of factors they can and cannot control. Controlled experiments are introduced and discussed. Students suggest variables to test and review the data sheets and graphs they will use to record their experiments.
Lesson 7 - Formal Testing (90 min)In the last activity students were introduced to the rationale and procedures for formal testing with controlled variables. In this activity they test distance and time for the variables of nozzle size and weight added. Teams will all carry out the same tests, each with its own vehicle. Because the design teams vehicles are different, their results will vary. However, the general trends should be the same.
Lesson 8 - Reviewing Experimental Data (45 min)Students share the data they graphed from experiments with their vehicles. They compare the graphs made by each design team and look for patterns in the data. They draw conclusions that serve as a basis for designing a fleet of JetToys that have different performance characteristics. The class discusses some of the physical principles involved, and students are introduced to conventional scientific terminology for the phenomena they have been observing.
Lesson 9 - Designing a JetToy (45 min)Student design teams use the information from their discussion in Activity 8, Reviewing Experimental Data, to design a JetToy that they think will meet the requirements given in the letter from EarthToy Designs. On a design specifications sheet, they state the performance the team wants its JetToy to have, draw their JetToy, and describe why they think these characteristics will meet their performance objectives.
Lesson 10 - Building and Testing a JetToy (90 min)Design teams build a JetToy based on their design specifications. They test their models and make adjustments to their designs as needed. They decorate the JetToys based on the drawings they made on their design specifications.
Lesson 11 - Presenting JetToy Designs (45 min)Student design teams share their final JetToy designs with the class and, if possible, invited guests. Teams present their JetToy Design Specifications and test results. Each team demonstrates its model to show how well it meets its JetToy Design Specifications. The class discusses the relationship between the design of the models and their performance. Students then reflect on how their understanding of the JetToy has grown since they began the challenge.
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