Course Description:
In this course, high school students will explore various engineering, physics, and mathematics concepts as they apply to mountain biking, robots, snowboarding, scuba diving, and bungee jumping. Additionally, students will exercise their creativity to solve a variety of real-world problems. Guest speakers will spark students’ interest in various engineering fields and introduce them to the world of graduate level engineering. As they build the robots they will use to compete in a variety of competitions, the students will apply their growing knowledge of engineering concepts to a challenging, authentic project. Our hope is that through this course students will become more aware of the opportunities available to them in various engineering fields as they learn important science and math concepts. We hope that they will feel interested and excited by the challenges of the course, and that their excitement will encourage them to consider STEM disciplines as they make decisions about their future studies and careers. Course
Objectives:
1. Students will explore force and torque and their relationships to vertical or horizontal
displacement and angular velocity.
2. Students will calculate mechanical advantage.
3. Students will calculate the effect of gear ratios on force and velocity.
4. Students will explain why force is equal to mass times acceleration.
5. Students will describe how simple machines such as levers and gears are used to make
extreme sports possible.
6. Students will explore Newton’s laws of motion as they apply to extreme sports.
7. Students will determine damping coefficients and spring constants of various materials.
8. Students will explore the aerodynamics of extreme sports and flight, in particular studying Bernoulli’s
principle, lift, drag, and angle of attack.
9. Students will use a variety of technology, including Excel, and Easy C (programming language).
10. Students will calculate velocity, acceleration, and position of objects, and demonstrate their understanding of the relationships between them (change in position = velocity multiplied by time; change in velocity = acceleration multiplied by time; change in position = ½ acceleration multiplied by time squared).
11. Students will study vibration and natural frequency.
12. Students will explore the way that changes in human understanding of engineering over time have affected the manufacturing of extreme sports gear.
13. Students will apply engineering concepts to the process of robot building.
Correlation to Colorado Standards:
The objectives of this course correlate with a number of Colorado mathematics and science standards for high school students. These standards include, but are not limited to, the following. Colorado students in grades 9-12 will develop expertise in:
- Colorado’s Mathematics Standards modeling real-world phenomena (for example, distance-versus-time relationships, compound interest, amortization tables, mortality rates) using functions, equations, inequalities, and matrices; understanding and applying the attributes of length, capacity, weight, mass, time, temperature, perimeter, area, volume, and angle measurement in problem-solving situations; selecting and using appropriate units and tools to measure to the degree of accuracy required in a particular problem-solving situation; and selecting and using appropriate technologies to gather, process, and analyze data and to report information related to an investigation.
- Colorado’s Science Standards identifying, measuring, calculating, and analyzing qualitative and quantitative relationships associated with energy transfer or energy transformation (for example, velocity, potential energy, kinetic energy, voltage, current); identifying, describing, and explaining physical and chemical changes involving the conservation of matter and energy (for example, oscillating pendulum/spring); observing, measuring, and calculating quantities to demonstrate conservation of matter and energy in physical interactions of matter (for example, force, work, power); describing and predicting physical interactions of matter (for example, velocity, force, work, power), using word or symbolic equations; demonstrating the interrelationships between science and technology (for example, building a bridge, designing a better running shoe); and tracing the development of an invention, theory, or discovery to demonstrate the dynamic nature of science.
Course Requirements:
Class Participation While no textbook is required for this course, participation is a must. The learning in this course occurs through a variety of lectures, labs, and independent and group problem-solving projects. The process of building robots, which offers students a great deal of freedom to explore their creativity and experiment with design, also requires students to develop skills in cooperative and self-directed problem-solving. Lectures Lectures will include discussions of the engineering involved in mountain biking, the aerodynamics of sports, skiing and snowboarding, and bungee jumping. The information provided in these lectures will be important to students as they participate in labs on the engineering of various extreme sports. Labs Labs will include two explorations of the engineering of mountain biking; one lab will investigate gear ratios and mechanical advantage, and another will look at the spring constant and damping coefficient of mountain biking shops. GPS labs will allow students to travel the world using Google Earth and tour the DU campus with the help of handheld GPS units. A lab will explore the engineering behind bungee jumping; in these labs, students will investigate the spring constants of bungee cords, use this knowledge to determine the best length for a bungee cord for “riders” of various masses, and design and create a bungee cord to give an egg the thrill ride of its life. Robot Building Student participation in building robots is an important component of the Engineering of Extreme Sports curriculum. Students will apply the concepts that they have learned about in lectures and experimented with in labs. They will study the engineering design process and learn what makes an effective design, program their robots using Easy C, and prepare their robots for competition in the Robotic Olympiad.
