In this integrated, multi-day Design Challenge unit, students will explore simple machines, transportation of materials, and river systems using stream tables. They will discover the problems ancient farmers faced and design their own working models that will attempt to solve those unique problems (includes Design Challenges Flowing From Here to There and Two Rivers Ran Through It).
Students explore simple machines to transport dry, but fluid, material from one container to another (also included as a part of Farming in Ancient Mesopotamia unit).
What if your skateboard had only two wheels, not four? What if it could go uphill without one foot pushing off the street? Then you wouldn’t have a skateboard, you’d have a wave board! And you’d be "street surfing," not skateboarding. So why not call it a "street surf board?" After all, there are no waves in the street. Or are there? The wave board requires the rider to generate mechanical wave motion in order to roll. Can your students relate its technology to the science of simple machines?
Students will discover the scientific basis for the use of inclined planes. They will explore, using a spring scale, a bag of rocks and an inclined plane, how dragging objects up a slope is easier than lifting them straight up into the air. Also, students are introduced to the scientific method and basic principles of experimentation. Finally, students design their own use for an inclined plane.
Subject:
Mathematics and Statistics, Science and Technology
Students are introduced to the concept of simple tools and how they can make difficult or impossible tasks easier. They begin by investigating the properties of inclined planes and how implementing them can reduce the force necessary to lift objects off the ground.
Subject:
Mathematics and Statistics, Science and Technology
This 11-minute video lesson continues to look at mechanical advantage. It includes an introduction to pulleys and wedges. [Physics playlist: Lesson 63 of 164].
Simple and compound machines are designed to make work easier. When we encounter a machine that does not fit this understanding, the so-called machine seems absurd. In this lesson, the cartoons of Rube Goldberg are introduced and engage the students in critical thinking about the way his inventions make a simple task even harder to complete. As the final lesson in the simple machines unit, the study of Rube Goldberg machines can help students evaluate the importance and usefulness of the many machines around them.
Subject:
Mathematics and Statistics, Science and Technology
In this activity, students are challenged to design a contraption using simple machines to move a circus elephant into a rail car. After students consider their audience and constraints, they work in groups to brainstorm ideas and select one concept to communicate to the class.
Subject:
Mathematics and Statistics, Science and Technology
Students continue their pyramid building journey, acting as engineers to determine the appropriate wedge tool to best extract rock from a quarry and cut into pyramid blocks. Using sample materials (wax, soap, clay, foam) representing rock types that might be found in a quarry, they test a variety of wedges made from different materials and with different degrees of sharpness to determine which is most effective at cutting each type of material.
Subject:
Mathematics and Statistics, Science and Technology
In this Design Challenge students explore how simple machines can make "work" easier while they design a device to retrieve their sibling from a tree house that has lost its ladder.
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