When we last looked in on the students at Westfield Vocational Technical High School in Westfield MA, they had just completed the second project in the fischertechnik High School STEM Lab Program.  Recently they have just completed the module focusing on basic electricity. As you probably know from past blog postings, and from our webinars on the fischertechnik STEM Lab Program (one of which you can view a recording of by clicking here: http://youtu.be/-YCtX6abxKo ), each unit of the program presents the students with a real-world scenario. The scenario will typically present some sort of engineering/design related problem, which working in groups, the students must solve and then build a prototype which shows how this problem is actually addressed. In this particular case, here is the scenario they were presented with:

“You are in head engineer in charge of wiring a new factory that is being built. It is very important to the workers that will be there that they have plenty of bright lights in the ceiling so they can see their work. There will be large manufacturing equipment on the factory floor running all day long. We do not want the lights and the machines interfering with each other. If wired incorrectly, the lights could become too dim or the machines might slow down. This situation could cause accidents to workers or damage to machines. It is your job to make sure the building is wired correctly.

You will conduct internet research to discover electrical theory. Then we will test this theory by building prototype circuits.  All work should be documented in the engineering notebook. Students will create a schematic to wire three lights to maximize the lights and to connect one motor so it will not slow down.  Students will create a prototype wiring of the schematic. A small presentation on PowerPoint including the schematic and digital photo will be submitted at the conclusion to the teacher.”

fischertechnik STEM Lab Projects in Action:

What follows are a selection of videos showing some of the ways the students at Westfield solved this problem. First off, here is group # 10, featuring Tim, Andre and Kyle:

Our next selection is from group #9, featuring Constantin, Ned, Jim, and Justin. They initially encountered some problems with the project. As they wrote in their group paper:

“One of our problems was during construction; we had a pretty hard time figuring out the wiring to make it into a parallel circuit. Every time we turned on all the lights and motors with the switches it wouldn’t run separately, therefore making it a series circuit. We kept rewiring it until we got the right setup. After we successfully set it up in a series circuit we had to draw a schematic diagram of all of our materials and how we set them up. We have 1 switch for the 3 light bulbs and another switch for the 2 motors so we were able to turn them on and off without interruption from one another. At first, when we had it in a series circuit, when you pressed the motor switch on or off it would also turn the light bulbs on or off. We had to (work) with the wiring to figure out what was wrong and eventually we realized it was in a series and not a parallel circuit.”

You can see their results here:

Once again, we thank teacher Dave Roberts and his students for sharing these updates with us so that we can follow along as they move through the program. We look forward to picking up on their progress once again in the fall. As always, if you have any questions about the fischertechnik STEM Lab Program, we’d love to hear from you. Please email us at [email protected].