Flying T-Shirts
Your design challenge: To find a way to get school t-shirts up into the stands during sporting events.
During this engineering design/build project, students investigate many different solutions to a problem. Their design challenge is to find a way to get school t-shirts up into the stands during home sporting events. They follow the steps of the engineering design process to design and build a usable model, all while keeping costs under budget.
All types of engineers design products to satisfy some need to address some problem. To do this, engineers follow a design process to help them create the best possible product or solution. It is essential for all engineers to become comfortable with the steps of the process as well as particular project requirements and constraints (such as as a budget).
After this activity, students should be able to:
- List the steps of the engineering design process.
- Explain why engineering is driven by need.
- Work under the constraints of a budget.
- Explain how potential energy is converted to kinetic energy to launch a T-shirt.