The Engineering workshop today seemed utterly interesting and it mainly dealt with the topic of balance and Engineering construction. The instructors and students worked with building blocks to model a balanced and unbalanced structure. Throughout the first half, the workshop observed the balance, center of mass, and gravity weight on the different structures that they made. The whole first half of the workshop consisted of many aspects of engineering construction dealing balance and rigidity of the objects. The second half consisted of a more civil engineering concept known as trusses. This topic spanned out to different topics like tension and compression. Overall, the workshop was one that enriched the many minds with engineering knowledge. The first half of the engineering workshop, taught by Aiden Beggs and Herjot Cheema, was known as âIt Takes Two to Toppleâ. This seemed like a more kinesthetic and tactile workshop due to the hands-on models being constructed with the building blocks. First, students observed the type of blocks and recorded them on given graph paper. After this, the workshop created different structures to observe the balance and see which structure would topple versus the structures that would stand. There were many combinations that the components of the workshop concocted. All of these spawned ideas of what components consisted of a toppling structure and a standing structure. With this newfound interest, instructors continued into an applet that could model the types of structures. This also gave quantitative information on the corresponding structure such as Center of Mass, gravity points, and more. At the end the instructors provided an overview about the subject while going more in depth in certain points of the teaching. It really provided a perfect closing to the first session of the Engineering workshop. After the instructors switched out, Rohin Shahi stepped up to talk about the topic of trusses. This is basically a long beam mean to connect rocks with multiple points of compression and tension. Compression is a term used to identify the places where the truss crunches together, while tension is places where the truss is stretched and elongated. Instructors began the lesson with a different applet that used nodes and segments to simulate a truss. It began with a simple triangle truss, students observed the aspects of the triangle truss and the forces acting upon those trusses and learned how to utilize the applet to further help them in the following activityâ¦a competition. Students had to compete in a to make a bridge of trusses with varying tension rates. Competitors would experiment within the parameters until they got the lowest amount of maximum load on one point. The winner, Jim, received a small prize for their hard effort and perseverance in the given challenge. The final activity of the workshop was another competition in which teams had to construct actual towers out of straws and pins. Each group varied in their strategy in the creation of the towers. Many teams involved the use of triangular figures due to their rigidity. The activity intrigued the many students and attention was fully focused on the tower activity. It exemplified the concept of engineers creating structures in the real world.
Overall the engineering workshop was full of enriching knowledge for everyone present. The topics of trusses and toppling blocks all orbited around balance. Students went through different activities that exercised engineering concepts. The day turned to be very promising for the minds of the students that attended the Shodor Engineering workshop.