Imaginative ideas needed! - For a young engineer's club

[Judi]

Hi All,

Been talking to the headteacher at the kids' school and she was wondering if I would help set up a young engineer's club next term as I have recently got a degree in construction (I'm blushing if you've read my question in drainage!).

At the moment the remit is completely open but I'm looking for ideas for "simple" (i.e. not expensive) experiments that will really capture the imagination of 9 - 11 year olds. It could be anything but thinking along the lines of starting from the ground up, i.e. why we need founds, what happens to waste water, properties of timber etc etc etc. and preferably, although not essentially, eco-friendly.

The main thing is for the kids to have fun whilst they learn and to open up the idea that there are more jobs out there than hairdressing and accounting.

All suggestions would be gratefully received.........

[danensis]

If you visit one of the new generation of science museums, like the Engineerium at Ironbridge, they have a lot of really good construction ideas you could copy, like arch bridges from blocks of foam, and lovely messy things with water.

[Judi]

Sounds like just the sort of thing I'm looking for, Danensis. But.............. Ironbridge? 'Fraid I've never heard of it. The only thing we really have up here in the Central belt of Scotland is the Science Centre, which is great but doesn't have much I could poach. Do you know if this engineerium has a website?

[danensis]

I got the name wrong, its called Enginuity:

http://www.ironbridge.org.uk/d_enginuity.asp

[TarmacLady]

Engineering clubs here on the "totherside" often build bridges from toothpicks. The with the strongest one -- defined by load bearing capability -- wins a prize, as does the most attractive (by vote). Load-bearing capability means that they get to *destroy* what they built, too, so there's fun all round.

There's also a number of clubs who design packages to cushion an egg from being broken when dropped from various heights (also loads of fun).

The coolest, however, has to be the local school that designed trebuchets to launch small pumpkins. The tv stations all filmed it, and they held their distance tests on the school football pitch -- the longest went nearly the full distance of the pitch (100 yards).

Hope these help...

[danensis]

Pumpkins - kids stuff. Over here we build trebuchets to fling cars.

[TarmacLady]

OHHHHH....I completely misunderstood...."pumpkins -- kids' stuff".

It's not the KIDS who want to build siege engines....it's the GROWNUP lads who want to destroy stuff!!

You could take a page from th BBC special on siege engines and construct a small castle wall with stones, wooden platforms, and thatch roofs, (ANOTHER engineering project!)and fling REAL stones at it to see how much of it you can take down!!!

For all you pillagers out there, you can create your own virtual trebuchet: http://www.globalspec.com/trebuchet/

(Yes, I scored well.)

:laugh:

[Judi]

Thanks guys,

All now makes sense when I put engineerium and ironbridge into the search engine and came up with nothing, danensis!

Great ideas (especially throwing cars, but I can't see the head teacher going for it......). Anything destructive, noisy, messy is bound to be a big hit with the kids, so I'm all for that!

Just a small school and looking at taking the interested kids (about 20 - most of them!) from P5 - P7, so quite a small group for supervision, making these ideas possible. BUT still looking for more.............!

Oh, and I thought I'd only get the "mine's bigger than yours" arguements with the kids, so I'm very sorry to be causing a row on line too!

[Tony McC]

Sodium in water is always sure to get the attention of even the most indolent student!

There was an eejit in my science class, back in the 1970s, who only ever asked one question - Does it explode, Sir? He nicked a load of calcium turnings during one class and when the teacher noticed that the container of turnings had emptied rather fastar than anticipated, he decided to question all the little groups positioned around the lab. It was only a matter of minutes before the eejit responsible gave himself away. He'd decided to hide the turnings in his hand, where they mixed with his natural perspiration and burnt the skin off his palm!

Vinegar and baking powder is a geat way of blowing up (as in inflating, not as in exploding!!) a balloon.

Ideas for young engineers - Adam Hart-Davis is always full of gimmicks and gadegets that appeal to younger minds, and there's the Eureka museum in Halifax. Corbelling (aka oversailing) with wooden blocks is a good challenge and helps link intuition with basic fizzix - they know it will fall over, but they don't really know why they know, if you know what I mean.

[moot de noo]

Hi Judy,

Have a look at the WRAP website (The QPA has a few bits too) regarding recycling. It's surprising the stuff you get in construction materials these days:

Glass in roads,
Secondary or "manufactured" aggregates such as:
Aggregate from poo (yes poo! ...well sewage sludge anyway!)
Aggregate from PFA (Lytag)
End of life vehicles
Aggregates from old toilets (ceramic waste)
IBA (incinerator bottom ash)
Slag aggregates (bound to get a titter from the kiddies that one)

The list goes on......

If you're in Central belt of Scotland look into getting a quarry visit set up. The Industry welcomes this so I should think you would get a fairly good welcome.

Hope this helps

[Judi]

Great ideas guys!

Seem to remember magnesium and water was good too, but chemistry wasn't one of my stronger subjects.........

Aggregate from poo? ? ? ? We must be feeding our kids the wrong stuff up here - thought it would only be swans that could produce stuff like that! Had thought about some sort of site visit but was worried about companies not being keen because of the age of the kids and health & safety but will definitely make enquiries.

Really appreciate all your suggestions - keep them coming - variety is bound to be the way to keep the kids interest with something different to do each week.

Thanks loads again,

[danensis]

Adam Hart-David has his own web site
http://www.adam-hart-davis.org/

I must admit the programme I always remember is one of the "Local Heroes" series where he tried to recreate Brunel's atmospheric railway. He got a length of plastic underground drainage pipe, cut a slot the full length of it with a jigsaw, then inserted a plunger in the pipe, connected by a string to a go-kart (do kids still build themselves carts these days?). The end of the pipe was attached to an AquaVac but the crowning glory was the seals - he used Post-It notes. He started up the vacuum cleaner, and was pulled along in the go-kart amid a shower of Post-It notes.

[Tony McC]

Judi - magnesium is the one where the Science teacher borrows a lighter or box of matches from the class smoker and sets fire to a ribbon it, whereupon it burns with a brilliance sufficient to blind half the class for the rest of the period.

[Judi]

aaaaaaaaah - did mention chemistry wasn't one of my star subjects right enough! But with your help its coming slowly (very slowly) back to me, Tony! Much prefered fizziks!

Thanks again danensis for the website. Funnily enough, when Adam Hart-Davis was mentioned I immediately thought of the same Brunel-esque experiment he did on local heroes!

This whole thing came about from a K-nex inter-school challenge that I was asked to escort (?hmmmm. I've read Ambrose's jokes, maybe chaperone would be better?) a couple of the kids to. They were asked to construct a bridge with maximum possible load bearing capacity (measured by placing books on it). Unfortunately, our kids tried hard but didn't really have the basic understanding of what was involved - not helped by the school not having a K-nex set to practice with.

So here I am, scrounging ideas, as I've now got a club with staff support (as they don't really know what to do but are happy to help me.......!) We break up for summer in a couple of weeks, so I've got 'til the end of August to put ideas together and find out if there's any funding out there (make the head teacher very happy).

Yet again, thanks a lot guys, keep the ideas coming!

[moot de noo]

Judi -

Vaguely remembered our chemistry teacher making things explode - one of the best ones was custard powder - he did it by putting a teaspoon full of custard podar into a balloon - inflate balloon, then hang the balloon under a plastic bucket with a lit candle in the bottom.

heat from candle burns through balloon, pressurised oxygen atomises custard powder, big surface area, ignition source,
massive explosion and bucket is several hundred feet in the air!

Probably be banned these days

Any way this was all to prove that anything containing carbon will burn (explode) provided you have a big enough surface area.

Ahhh the good old days!