Stop the Flopping: Designing Soccer Shin Guards
Students engineer a working pair of shin guards for soccer or similar contact sport from everyday materials. Since many factors go into the design of a shin guard, students follow the engineering design process to create a prototype. Along the way, students keep a notebook documenting each stage of the process and reflect on what they learned during the design.
A student tests out her shin guard design in class.Copyright Diane M. Walsh, University of Connecticut RET
Each group will decide on the appropriate supplies to use based on their selected design. The teacher can determine what materials are available for the class; however, in order to adhere to the principle of designing within constraints, encourage students to bring in and use recycled materials and donated items! Some materials the teacher might wish to have on hand for groups to share are below; this is by no means an exhaustive list.
- glue gun (one per group)
- glue sticks
- duct tape
- elastic of varying lengths
- fabric cut into “fat quarters” or 45.75 cm x 55.90 cm (18 in. x 22 in.)
- sewing needles
- spools of thread in various colors
- flexible plastic from recycled three-ring binders or two-liter soda bottles
- Styrofoam or similar packing material saved from shipping packages
- sponges or “magic” erasers
- cardboard of varying thickness, such as cereal boxes or moving boxes)
Contributors
Diane Walsh; Soliman Alhudaithy; Dr. Kazunori Hoshino; Ashley LaPane
Supporting Program
The Joule Fellows Program, School of Engineering, University of Connecticut RET
Acknowledgements
This material was developed based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under grant no. EEC 1711706—Sustainable Energy for an Inclusive Society RET site at the University of Connecticut. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.
Copyright
2019 by Regents of the University of Colorado; original © 2018 University of Connecticut