Materials Engineering Activities

Turn Milk into Plastic

Plastic is the most common material utilized due to its high durability, ease to work with, and is cheap to manufacture. The early days of manufacturing plastic surprisingly first began with using milk. In this simple activity students will create this early version of plastic out of milk. Students will understand what components from the milk are utilized and how they react with other chemicals to form plastic.

 

3D Print with Sand

3D printing has been a newly upcoming additive manufacturing technique. Most traditional manufacturing techniques use subtractive manufacturing where a block of material will be broken down and shaped. For additive manufacturing the material is shaped by adding a new material one layer at a time. Students will observe this manufacturing technique by 3D printing shapes of their choice with the use of sand and glue.

 

Are You Gelling?

Though we often associate gels with common items like JELL-O or insoles, gels have been a growing subject of interest for the materials world. They are used as a medical device to deliver medicine to a specific part of the body like bio-gels or as a lightweight insulator from extreme temperatures like aerogel. In this activity students will create their own gel from cornstarch and water and test its properties. They will then vary the concentration of cornstarch to understand what mechanisms the starch plays in gel formation.

Testing Insulation Materials

Insulation is an important component for many applications from buildings to space craft. It is vital that an effective insulation is utilized that can help reduce energy needed to heat or cool a building or protect astronauts from the extreme environments of space. In this activity students will utilize four different types of materials that will act as an insulator for hot water. They will then monitor the temperature of the water to determine the best choice of insulation material.

 

Spaghetti Beams

A vital part of a materials job is to study the mechanical properties of a material when subjected to compressive or tensile forces. The materials response may indicate that it is brittle or ductile providing engineers knowledge for what conditions the material can be best suited for. In this activity students will use uncooked spaghetti to test its mechanical properties through a bend test to understand the nature of how it breaks and how it can be strengthened.

 

Measuring Friction Using Different Materials

Friction forces are an important material’s parameter engineers have to consider when optimizing a material for the application. For instance, when designing moving parts for an engine, engineers want a part with low friction to reduce wear and optimize efficiency. In this activity, students will understand the nature of how frictional forces are produced. They will then test three different materials to observe how their characteristics produce low or high amounts of friction and what applications they would be best suited for.

Testing Insulation Materials

Insulation is an important component for many applications from buildings to space craft. It is vital that an effective insulation is utilized that can help reduce energy needed to heat or cool a building or protect astronauts from the extreme environments of space. In this activity students will test four different materials to see which is best at keeping an ice cube from melting. From this activity students will understand the properties that make a material a good insulator while observing the transferring of heat via convection through a material.

 

Fabrication of a Resin Key

A big part of any engineering discipline is determining what design criteria need to be met. In this activity students will design and build a keyring out of resin. Resin is a thermoplastic that becomes a liquid when heated then solidifies when cooled, making it ideal for shaping complex shapes. Students will first discuss what criteria they want the keyring to meet then design and build the keyring out of resin then test to see if the criteria has been met.

 

Spaghetti Beams

A vital part of a materials job is to study the mechanical properties of a material when subjected to compressive or tensile forces. The materials response may indicate that it is brittle or ductile providing engineers knowledge for what conditions the material can be best suited for. In this activity students will use uncooked spaghetti to test its mechanical properties through a bend test to understand the nature of how it breaks and how it can be strengthened. For highschool students, record the amount of weight added in increments then measure the amount of bend occurring each added weight increment. From this, students will be able to generate a load vs displacement diagram.