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Internal

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Internal Tasks

Activities

Each visit includes a hands-on activity that demonstrates the engineering design process. Below are several that have worked particularly well. It is important that the activity be fun for the girls, will engage their thinking, and will help relate some of the math and science principles they may have learned in school to engineering. We plan on all these activities taking a minimum 20-25 minutes. If you have a shorter visit, we recommend cutting the presentation time rather than the activity time.

UWWI suggests  

We have found that no matter how much you want to analyze with the girls what they learned from the activity, it is incredibly difficult to grab their focus after letting them loose with something hands-on. We do the PowerPoint presentations first, and while one presenter is getting the supplies ready, the other is introducing the activity and the principles behind it. You can bring the girls back together for a few short minutes of lively question and answer. The giveaways, or SWAG, will be helpful here to bribe the girls' attention, especially at the younger level.

We have also put together "Activity Kits." The coordinator puts these kits together with all the supplies needed for a visit. The presenters check out the kits when they go on a visit and return them after. This way, the coordinator can replenish the kits with the necessary supplies so they are always ready and there is only one person handling reimbursement rather than each group of presenters. Below you will find shopping lists for the kits for each activity.

 

Here are some links to slides, shopping lists, and instructions explaining the activities that we use.

 

Paper Airplanes!

plane

Parachutes!

parachute

 

Straw Tower!

straws

 

Potato Batteries!

potato

Rubber Band Cars!

car

Suspension Bridges!

bridge

 

If you have developed an activity that works well, email us and we will include it on the website!

 

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