Miller Creek's 7th grade science teachers proposed a challenge to their students: Build a helmet that will protect someone's head from injury. They built small prototypes that would cover an egg and then tested them. Some of the rules: They had to be able to be take off the helmet (Does anyone wear a helmet to bed?), it could encompass the egg (No one has a floating head!), and withstand a face first fall from a specified distance. Here are some pictures of what happened. Thanks Sue Holland, Janice Woods and Erik Lunde! 2nd year of the helmet project. Survivors!
15 Comments
Julia Marrero
2/2/2016 02:39:48 pm
Great engineering design project. How did you test the helmets? It looks like they were dropped from incrementally higher heights until the egg/skull broke? We are planning on doing a similar activity on our 7th grade bike day. We'll be taking our students to downtown Fairfax where they will go through several stations: bike gear investigations, visit to the Marin Bike Museum, Safe Routes to Schools lesson, and bike helmet experiment. Thanks for the tips!
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Sue Holland
2/5/2016 06:12:21 pm
This year we dropped a string with a hook from the ceiling. The helmet design had to include a hook to attach to our hook. Essentially creating a pendulum, the egg in helmet would be "smashed" into the wall (whiteboard) at 30 cm increments. 210 cm was the highest tested. Your helmet was concussion proof if it survived. A great iteration on the teachers' part this year. We also calculated speed. Final completion between Holland and Woods classes next week. So much fun!
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daniel
10/15/2019 09:24:03 am
good job
RCTM
2/11/2016 04:14:37 pm
Wow what a fantastic project. This is something that the kids can really relate to.
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Bonnie
2/11/2016 04:22:07 pm
I love that the kids get to practice problem solving on a challenging project. Experimentation is so great because they learn from the failures and the successes. And it's fun!
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Liz Naughton Hopkins
2/22/2016 04:11:18 pm
Excellent activity. It's a nice adaptation from the regular egg-drop activity because it actually solves a problem: How do we make a safe helmet? The face-first fall is great. I would also love to hear about something falling on the top of the head -- would the design have to change if you added an additional test? Cool stuff!
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Sue Holland
2/23/2016 07:04:31 am
Thanks, Liz. These engineering projects are always iterating. Smashing it into the wall was new this year, so who knows what next year will bring. If you have suggestions, we are always open!!!
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Kaki McLachlan
2/23/2016 03:07:07 pm
I can't wait to do this with my kids in a couple of months. Here's a link to the activity that I did last year. We spent many days on creating iterations. However, this year, I need to find a way to have 40 students complete the activity within 90 minutes. Maybe iterations beforehand in class and a final challenge at our big Bike Day Event. Hmmmm.....
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Kathryn Cimarelli
2/27/2016 07:48:27 am
What a great project! It gives the egg project a real purpose and truly emphasizes the importance of helmets. I am happy that my students have this to look forward to in middle school!
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Adam Singer
3/3/2016 09:04:40 pm
This is an amazing project. I love the focus on a practical problem with a good head stand-in for testing that gives an empirical results. The only down side I've ever found with eggs as test subjects is that results are completely binary: it worked or it didn't. But I guess in a helmet situation you would probably see things the same way. I'm curious if you allowed students to iterate testing in class, or were they left to do that on their own at home?
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sue holland
3/4/2016 06:56:47 am
Hi Adam,
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Sarah Horky
5/12/2016 11:54:15 am
What an amazing project! I am looking forward to doing this project next year with my students. Our 1st and 3rd graders do an egg drop challenge (building a safe box/parachute so the egg does not crack). This would be a great next step activity. Especially relating to safety and why we should be wearing helmets!
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6/2/2016 03:50:05 am
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7/9/2016 01:16:49 am
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iTEAMS is a professional development research project designed to provide teachers with support to deepen their content knowledge and pedagogy to promote STEM education aligned to the Common Core State Standards in Mathematics (CCSS) and Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).
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