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Week 6: Mechanical Engineering

March 27, 2009 We did the ramp roller activity as our mechanical engineering lesson. The goal was to make the ramp roller go as far as possible. We should have set another constraint – that the ramp roller must have at least two axles or something like that, because a lot of the students eventually started rolling just two wheels connected by an axle down the ramp. This activity leaves a lot of room for experimentation, so it was important to be talking to the groups to ask them why they were making certain changes to their ramp rollers. Another note: when discussing examples of mechanical engineering at the beginning of the lesson, it was helpful to distinguish mechanical engineers from civil engineers by explaining that mechanical engineering deals with objects that have moving parts, whereas civil engineering revolves around stationary structures.