Making Sense of Magnification and Designing Magnifiers
The design of Velcro under magnification helps understand the simple engineering design of this object.Copyright 2005 Natural Philo, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=25882473
The hook-and-loop fastener (commonly known as Velcro) is a direct invention of an engineer! In this activity, students are shown a zoomed image of Velcro, and research what magnification is through videos and a read aloud. Students are presented a problem for which they need a magnifier. Students use the engineering design process to make a magnifier or a tool that magnifies their own piece of Velcro. Students test their design and record data.
Engineers create a variety of imaging technologies that allow us to observe phenomena that exist beyond the range of our five senses. Engineers constantly revise and improve technologies like MRI, CT scan, spectrophotometers, microscopes, telescopes, etc. to assist a variety of engineering fields that rely on magnification technologies. Biomedical engineers rely on magnification technology for the evaluation of cells and materials engineers rely on magnification technology to evaluate the properties of existing materials to assist them in making more new ones.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Describe what a magnifier does.
- Discuss how a magnified image differs from what can be seen with the naked eye.
- Describe what properties of matter can be observed in greater detail with magnification compared to five senses alone.