2018-2019 Science Fair

Assess how you conducted your engineering project

● Please move this document to your s​ hared Biology folder.

● To complete this, you will need to refer to your project proposal.
● After you answer all the questions, remember to ​submit the document in Canvas​.

Iterations/versions
1. By the deadline (February 5), did you succeed in building and testing as many versions/iterations of
your project as you had hoped? If not, explain why not.
Yes, I did create as many versions as I wanted to but they weren’t the same versions as I had
expected to at the beginning of my brainstorming. (Which turned out to be fine)

2. If not, what could you have done differently to meet the deadline?

Procedure for ​building

3. Below, paste a copy of your planned steps from your project proposal (#9), and the annotated drawing
(#8).

Step 1- Use plastic-melting in the Idea Lab to create the shell of the helmet
Step 2- coat the interior with various materials and material combinations
Step 3- apply force and record how much force is absorbed
Step 4- place the most force absorbent material in different shapes/patterns and repeat the recording
4. Carefully look over your initial plans for building your project (which you just pasted above).
In a numbered or bullet-pointed list and/or additional annotated drawing (you can draw by hand and
upload a picture of it)

a) identify in detail things you actually did differently, and

b) explain why you made each change.
​Instead of focusing on the overall helmet (mask, shell), I focused on the main protector
against head injuries: the padding. I did this because it was ​very​ challenging to create my own
shell with school resources that was durable enough to take repetitive hits all while being able to
keep steady & reliable data. When I focused on the padding, I looked at the part of the rubric that
was ‘Try to use recycled items’, by doing so I came up with ideas like using the springs in
click-pens to create padding that had some sort of a recoil or push-back to not only muffle the hits
but to reduce the force taken.

5. If you could build the next iteration/prototype of your project, what improvements would you make,
and how would you do it? Explain below and/or upload annotated drawing.
I would find a pre-made substitution for the padding and use it instead of trying to create my own
type of padding so that my results would have more meaning.

Procedure for ​testing

6. In your proposal, find your design criteria (#5) and how you planned to test them (should be included
in #10). Paste the criteria and the way you planned to test them below.

Design criteria reasoning (briefly explain) How will you test or measure it?

Durable It’s a helmet so it shouldn’t break on I’ll apply force and see if it’s still
contact intact

Not too It shouldn’t weigh down the user I will simply wear it and compare
Bulky/Heavy

Absorbs It should protect the user’s head Measure using impact sensor
Force/Impact

Visibility The user should be able to see I’ll wear it and see what’s visible

7. In a numbered or bullet-pointed list,

a) identify in detail things you actually did differently to test your project for success, and
b) explain why you made each change.
● Focused less on entire helmet and solely on the padding - Because the padding is the main
source of impact absorbing.
Impact on Results
8. Think about how implementing your project differed from your initial plans (your answers to
questions above).
Below, explain how these changes may make your project stronger and/or make it weaker (i.e. make
your results more reliable or less reliable).
These made my project stronger because the different types of padding were in the same helmet
so the tests wouldn’t have multiple dependent variables; so the data would be clearer.

Reflection on learning
In August, y’all shared your thoughts on what the point of school is. Many of your responses involved
building skills. You may recognize some of them in this list below, which has a few of my top priorities for
skills to build in this class.

9. Read over the skills and indicate with a comment where you feel you are with each, at this point in the
year.

I think I have I’m making progress. I I’m struggling: I This is a very weak
very strong feel pretty good about see some area for me. I don’t
skills in this. it. improvement but feel I’ve improved at
it’s really hard. all.

Design Yes, I feel like

engineering I’m strong
projects when it
comes to
designing

Manage​ time & I’m not the best at it

long term work but I am getting
better at
scheduling/planning

Work​ ​well When I work, I work

independently: well. But the
with focus, problem is creating
self-reliance, & my own time to
initiative work (see above)

Own ​your own Yes, I’m

learning: take strong when
responsibility for it comes to
your work; being
know when you independent.
need help and But, once I
ask for it. think I need
some help or
guidance I’m
not afraid to
self-advocate.