Calling All Students, Teachers, Engineers and Interested People in Education.
By Corporal Willy, Jan. 25, 2010
It is a well known idea or trick to use during a presentation to do something spectacular to capture the attention of those that will be listening to you. Start with a great opening and keep it going. Well this is kind of hard to do in an article post on a blog site but here goes nothing.
America is not the only country that needs to inspire young people to become engineers. It was considered to be a very “un cool” thing or at least it was in the past. Taken from this month’s Control Design Magazine were these statistics, 14% of youngsters don’t want to do any kind of physical work and 61% of them want to be CEO’s. With the enormous bonuses being paid out today that is no small wonder. Many educators are working to improve this image and I work behind the scenes to help them with ideas to make studying more interesting, challenging and deeper. I’ve come up with an idea that is not really new or tremendously different, but one that I think can bring about more intensified interests into technology fields with students. Look down below here at these screen shots. The whole idea here is to guess how much weight this small structure will hold.
That is about 30 lbs of weight on it already but it isn’t there for testing purposes but to insure a good contact on all surfaces for the glue to dry.
Take a look at the finished structure down below that I will be taking to the Foothills High School tomorrow. One of their teachers has agreed to let students do the destructive testing on it. I’m going on record now in advance of that testing to say that I think it will hold close to 100 lbs or 45.3592 Kilograms weight for a minute. Please continue to read and look at the pictures down below here.
Seemingly this fiber board or corrugated cardboard composite is a universal type of packaging material that is made in various strengths and configurations. It is also a very closely guarded secret as to the physical properties of this composite material after it is made into various configurations. Standards both national and international must be met for the proper adoption for its use, but still the industry is close mouthed as to the individual physical properties of this stuff.
My plan here is to involve many schools around the world in the testing of various types of configurations so that data can be generated in any standard measurement system using guidelines from a select committee. This will show some sort of pattern as to the strength of the materials, shapes and sizes when made into different types of structures. I will publish all results so that it can be studied for use in school projects. It can be used in teacher led learning assignments and that meaningful engineering data can be obtained while doing it.
Final screen shots are down below here of the test sample project that will be brought to school tomorrow. I’m thinking that the four 1 inch square I beams (2.54 x 2.54 centimeters) will hold about 100 lbs of force in a downward or negative Y axis direction. I have no data to back up this assumption for this material. It is just my unscientific guess that it might withstand that amount of stress of 100 pounds or 45.3592 Kilograms. This is exactly what Ms. Rogers’ high school class will determine by doing the independent testing for me. Failure stresses will be presumed if anything breaks or distorts severely enough from the “at rest condition or equilibrium state.” Elmer’s Wood Glue is my “wielding” material.
Here is what I am proposing to all of you because I need your participation and help. I would like to get schools all over the world to build projects like this one or even bigger and better ones, using standard methods and materials that will be proposed by a committee of people. We can publish it all on this web site from all those schools that participate in projects along with plenty of pictures. I already have the backing of Mr. Hayes the CEO of the engineering.com web site, the Dassault Systems SolidWorks Company and for now one high school by the name of Foothills High, in Las Vegas, Nevada. If this is something you might like to participate in or to help set up the standards for testing to be done, please let me know. I can be reached at rwilliams@engineering.com so I hope to hear from you. Bye.
