Take a Seat! Minimizing Pressure and Optimizing Comfort in School Chairs
Students working together to assemble their sensor.Copyright 2022 Ashley LaPane, UConn Joule Fellows Program
Students build and use a simple capacitance sensor as they learn how capacity relates to pressure. As they learn more about how capacitance changes as pressure is applied to the sensor, they explore how to measure the pressure of sitting in a school seat. This will lead to the exploration of the problem of uncomfortable school seats and then the task of designing a cushion to be used to lessen the pressure of sitting in a school chair. Student groups can measure the effectiveness of their cushions and compare the success of different designs and materials by measuring the change in pressure using the capacitance sensors they built.
Engineers use sensors in a wide variety of situations. Sensors help detect changes in physical quantities, and oftentimes are utilized to identify changes before problems arise on a large or small scale. When selecting or designing a sensor, engineers must take into account what they are measuring and how they are measuring the quantity. For example, wearable sensors can detect changes in or on the body, so they must be flexible and not cumbersome to the wearer. The use of sensors is pivotal to understanding more about our world – so we must use the right sensor for the task!
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Explain the relationship between capacitance, force, and pressure.
- Calculate the change in capacitance when pressure is applied to a capacitance sensor.
- Discuss the success of their seat cushion in the context of how much their cushion was able to decrease the pressure/capacitance felt by the sitting individual.
- Compare the success of different seat cushion designs by comparing change in capacitance.