Assignment:
Introduction
When walking around the lanes in your neighborhood what designs of buildings, shapes, and streets do you see?
What is the terrain of your place? What do you think determines the designs that engineers and architects decide to use? Imagine living in areas with prone such as forested areas with too much snows and too cold and hilly terrain, what type of design should be used in such areas? Use of paper building provides an earlier solution to the problem by coming up with protons before actual constructions commences on ground. The paper building provides answers to all the problems that these professionals face the type of materials that should be used, the shape and the design that has to be adopted to ensure that the building does not have negative impacts on the people living in it.
Engage:
Safety Note: There are no potential risks in the paper building.
Distribute the pieces of paper 8.5"x11" to each of three to four students in groups with about 10 to 12 bottles of water instead of washers. The students have to cut the paper into a square, then create creases on their squares and then fold the paper into smaller squares. They have to come up with a good number of floors and roofs with different designs. This discussion should be able to explore the question:
What's the role of the paper building in designing?
Explore:
One requires having at least a piece of paper with dimensions of 8.5"x11" for each of the groups which comprise three to four groups. These materials must be ready before class time.
The students should then commence folding up the papers into required shapes and designs. This starts by first cutting and folding the paper into square shapes. If students don't follow the steps required in the paper building then the expected designs would not be achieved which might make the project unviable. The guiding principle at this point is the effective use of paperwork to come up with designs that solve the long-lasting problem which is how buildings can carrying or holding a big amount of snow.
Explain:
The paper building provides another dimension for the students to understand different levels of the environment in which they might be forced to conduct their projects. The use of papers to build ensures that the students get experience in how to build in different types of climate and terrain, and such areas determine the materials, shapes and designslike snow areas which needs specific characteristics of buildings there. Students should have a view of the expected regions of conducting actual projects and then come up with appropriate designs by the use of the papers. These models would help in effective actual construction hence reducing the construction cost that would have been incurred on-site when there was no early designing of the area to be constructed.
Extend:
1. Let students work in groups of 3 to 4 members.
2. Homework cases would involve students working on various projects in which they have to look carefully at snow climatic conditions in different parts of the world and come up with designs by the use of papers on most appropriate buildings and kinds of washers like bottle of water to represent the weight of snow on paper buildings.
3. The washers and paperwork done should be used in class discussion to make students understand the concepts better.
Evaluation:
After this lesson:
1-Students should be able to come up with different paper structures that illustrate situations, the environment, climate and the shapes that suit snow area for durability when put into use.
2-Students can learn steps to solve problems facing a person in his environment.
3-Students know the external influences that happen to buildings in the snowy region and how they can finding solutions to them.
Conclusion:
Engineers are problem solvers and any problem that prevails in society should be managed by the engineers on a timely basis. In this case, students should be able to explore various cases in society and come up with amicable solutions for such issues to help the community at least live in better and effective housing structures specially in snow areas.