Education Technology

Building Bridges Between Engineering and Mathematics

Activity Overview

In this activity, students walk through an engineering design project that has a cool algebra twist. Students will develop a foundational relationship between mass, force, and gravity. 

Key Steps

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    Students are challenged to build a bridge strong enough to support the force sensor and some washers using only a single sheet of paper. 

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    Students collect force data using the Vernier Dual Range Force sensor, washers, and their graphing calculator. 

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    Students analyze the data by making a scatterplot, fitting a linear regression curve to the data, then interpreting the slope and intercept in context.