Career Connections at SAVY 2019: Session 2, Day 1 – Strength and Structure of Engineering Materials (Rising 7th grade)

Posted by hallep on Monday, July 15, 2019 in Grade 7, SAVY.

Hello SAVY Parents!

Today we laid our foundation of materials science! This morning we learned how engineers categorize materials by discussing the differences between metals, polymers, and ceramics.  We can categorize these materials based on bond type, which allows us to know broad materials properties.  Ask your students the differences between these materials.  How do engineers use this knowledge to select materials when designing parts?

This morning we also dove into the structural part of engineering.  We started by creating free standing paper towers that also held a tennis ball (the tallest being 39 inches) to begin to explore our intuition regarding structures.  This led us to discuss engineering stress and engineering strain.  There are a lot of materials parameters that engineers use to relate stress and strain.  We learned how to determine these parameters from a stress-strain diagram, and how engineers determine these parameters.

Tomorrow we’re going to use this new stress-strain knowledge for some structural problems!

-Kelsay