Ranking the Rocks for Desired Properties
Which rocks are best suited for building caverns?Copyright (cave photo) National Park Service, (rocks & hammer) Utah Geological Survey http://www.nps.gov/jeca/parknews/images/Jewel-Cave-Marc-Ohms-photo.jpg http://geology.utah.gov/surveynotes/gladasked/landscape_rocks/muskratstation.htm
Continuing the Asteroid Impact challenge, student teams assign importance factors called "desirability points" to the rock properties found in the previous activity in order to mathematically determine the overall best rocks for building caverns within. They learn the real-world connections and relationships between the rock properties and the desired engineering properties for designing and building caverns (or tunnels, mines, building foundations, etc.).
Engineers determine the locations and construction methods to create structures such as caverns, tunnels, mines, bridges and foundations. To do this, they look at data from a variety of sources. They consider locations and rock properties as they apply to specific real-world design and construction situations. They make calculations and consider alternative options. They even make calculations to compare solutions to each other. They take all these steps so they make smart decisions that keep people safe.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Enter data from a graph and into a table.
- Synthesize data from numerous categories and build a concise table of data.
- Relate the relevance of rock properties to real-world design and construction applications.
- Use a mathematical scoring system to rank solutions.
- Synthesize the best rocks with all previous data to update their candidate cavern locations.