Engineering By Design Crane Boom Stress Testing and Slow Motion Analysis

We recently designed and built Tower Crane Booms out of balsa wood. The students learned to apply these Truss equations as an application of our study of vectors where they apply to real world problem solving. The students were able to take the constraints set forth by the Engineering By Design curriculum, apply the 2 dimensional Truss formula (on the left) and determine what they felt to be the optimum number of trusses for the dimensions they chose to build within. We then tested these structures by weighting them down using a container of  water and measuting the volume each one could hold until it failed. We converted the volume of the water to weight to determine the strongest structure. When we'd determined the strongest, we then took the assessment one step further by determining which structure was most efficient by comparing the ratios of the loads held to the material consumed by each design.

We are implementing the Engineering By Design Curriculum this year at South Atlanta. The movie you see above was shot and produced exclusively on my iPhone 6+ using the video recording functions and iMovie for iOS8.

-Note: The quote above is attributed to a sign in the Atrium of the Stanford School of Design and accurately describes my approach to the MakerSpace as classroom.