Sixty 7-8th graders participate in the WIMS program annually. As part of this program Dr. Bush's presented an overview of Mechanical Engineering to the students and then to conducted an active-learning activity with the class to help them better understand aspects of Mechanical Engineering.
For the first part of the morning, Dr. Bush presented a general overview of Mechanical Engineering - she disscussed what types of projects involved a Mechanical Engineer. Next, she fit the Mechanical Engineering parameters of (force, motion, material properties, design, heat transfer and fluid flow) in the context of her research area, biomechanics. For the second part of the day, Dr. Bush engaged student in an active learning taks called the Spaghetti Challenge. Students formed teams of 5 individuals, each team was given all the same items including 50 strands of uncooked spaghetti, 3 feet of scotch tape and one large marshmallow. The goal was for the team to build a tower – the tallest tower possible that would support the marshmallow at the top of the tower. Many built the tower, but then upon placing the marshmallow on top of the tower it either broke or bent over sufficiently losing height. After completion of the Spaghetti Challenge Dr. Bush led a discussion on the difficulties they encountered using spaghetti strands. She related this to parameters studied in mechanical engineering, including a discussion of material property changes in the Spaghetti if it were cooked. She and the teams discussed the different tower designs, and the forces produced by the marshmallow.