Published by Raymond Alvin on 7/16/21
Background
This summer, on July 24th, we will be hosting an Engineering Challenge Workshop at the Thomas House Family Shelter.
The Thomas House Family Shelter is a homeless shelter that helps struggling families get back up on their own two feet. We wanted to give the kids at the shelter a great time as well as teach them useful STEM information and give them an opportunity to build key skills.
Our engineering challenges are designed to help kids develop and improve important skills such as problem solving, teamwork, and critical thinking.
Engineering Challenge 1 – Egg Drop
Our first engineering challenge is an egg drop. Kids will have to create a contraption with provided materials that can prevent an egg from cracking from the highest point. The winner that is able to drop an egg from the highest point without it cracking will win a gift card.
The challenge will begin with a brief teaching phase where topics like gravity, potential energy, kinetic energy, and the transfer of energy will be taught. This will connect the engineering challenge to real world topics.
After the teaching phase, we will move onto the build phase. Kids will have an hour to build and test their contraptions. They will each get 1 test egg as we strongly encourage testing out new designs and implementing the engineering design process. For this reason, we will provide a plethora of materials as well as to give kids the ability to fully use their imaginations.
These are the main materials that will be provided to create the egg drop contraption:
- plastic straws
- popsicle sticks
- cotton balls
- party cups
- cardboard
- balloons
- styrofoam
- bubble wrap
- polyurethane foam
- egg cartons
- milk cartons
- toilet paper/paper towel roll inserts
Limited padding materials such as cotton balls and bubble wrap will be provided to prevent “over padding.”
They will be able to connect these materials with tape, a glue gun, and rubber bands. Scissors, and boxcutters will also be available to help cut materials. (Only volunteers will be allowed to operate the glue gun and box cutter.)
Finally, we will test out the contraptions on the Shelter’s outdoor staircase.
We chose hard boiled eggs to avoid a huge mess and will place trash bags on the floor. We will also bring cleaning materials to the Shelter and clean up any mess that is left over.
We will start at waist height and incrementally increase the height of the drops until only one winner is left.
Engineering Challenge 2 – Parachute Egg Drop
Our second engineering challenge is an egg drop. Kids will have to create a parachute with provided materials that can prevent an egg from cracking from the highest point. The winner that is able to drop an egg from the highest point without it cracking will win a gift card.
The challenge will begin with a brief teaching phase where topics like air resistance and how factors like surface area and weight affect a fall will be taught.
After the teaching phase, we will move onto the build phase. Kids will have an hour to build and test their contraptions. They will each get 1 test egg to test out their contraptions.
These are the main materials that will be provided to create the parachute:
- fabric
- paper bags
- trash bags
- plastic bags
- ziplock bags
Yarn and thread will also be provided to help attach the parachute to the egg. Kids will not be able to use their contraptions from the previous challenge and instead everyone’s egg will be housed in an identical cardboard box that houses the egg. This box in itself will not be enough to protect the egg from but will give each group a higher chance of creating a parachute that can reliably keep their egg safe.
Finally, we will test out the contraptions on the Shelter’s outdoor staircase.
We will start at waist height and incrementally increase the height of the drops until only one winner is left.
Results
The first challenge competition was close. After moving all the way to the top of the stairs, there were still some surviving eggs. We had to take start taking parts off of everyone’s contraption. We eventually narrowed down the competitors to two. When they dropped their stripped down contraptions, both eggs cracked. We had to determine the winner by seeing whose egg cracked least. Daisy won. Despite winning the gift card, she was sad because her egg had cracked. (This is evident in her “winning picture.”)
Like the first challenge, many eggs survived the initial drops. Everyone was given a cup, box, and layer of bubble wrap to place their egg in for this challenge. These parts helped protect everyone’s egg in addition to their parachutes. After taking everyone’s bubble wrap and box away, Jonavan cam out victorious!
Here are a few additional pictures from the event:
Event Planners and Volunteers:
I would like to give a huge shoutout to those who helped plan and volunteers who will be at the event for making this possible:
- Parth Solanki
- Chloe Chang
- Alexander Seamark
- Ritvik Kanchanapally
- Atherv Vidhate
- Aruthan Raveendra
- Shiv Patel
- Ethan Chemmanoor
- Sameer Kataria
- Ruben Alvin
