Crash course: Hands-on tech class at Western Hills uses STEM skills to impart key life lessons

Posted 5/22/14

The onlookers can’t bear to watch, their hands covering their eyes, shoulders up as they brace themselves, waiting for impact.

The car is crushed; the driver’s insides spill out of the …

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Crash course: Hands-on tech class at Western Hills uses STEM skills to impart key life lessons

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The onlookers can’t bear to watch, their hands covering their eyes, shoulders up as they brace themselves, waiting for impact.

The car is crushed; the driver’s insides spill out of the windows and doors, and through the floor. The airbag is deployed. It’s a messy, gory scene.

Luckily, it’s little more than some scrambled egg that’s seeping out the “car” – which is created out of card stock – and the “airbag,” a fuzzy sock, can be washed. The car’s “driver,” a formerly happy-faced puddle of egg white, yolk and shells, is not going to make it, though.

“Didn’t make it,” Dan McKenna calls out, as he examines the status of the vehicle and its driver. “Crumple zone is too soft and there appears to be head trauma.”

The onlookers sigh, shaking their heads, and McKenna calls on his next victim.

Sounds like the scene of a deadly car crash, but thankfully, it’s just another of McKenna’s hands-on Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) lessons in his eighth-grade technology class at Western Hills Middle School.

“This is a technology education class with the focus on design and engineering,” McKenna said. “For the first few weeks, the students research the modern automobile and its safety restraints – crumple zones, air bags, shatterproof glass, etc. The students pair up into groups and begin the design phase, wherein they create a scale model crash test car. It’s equipped with crumple zones, an airbag and with an egg. We shoot the model car down a test track at 25 mph to test the structure, and simulate a crash into a fixed object.”

The goal of McKenna’s lessons, and the student-designed and engineered cars, is to keep the egg unharmed, or unbroken, as the case may be.

“We’ve been talking a lot about the safety of cars, about physics and car crashes, because the physics of it all is when something hits another thing – the impact, the outside forces and the consequences,” said Alec Schlink, one of McKenna’s students.

McKenna notes that as much fun as the culminating activity is, he has the hope that in some small way he’s imparting an important lesson on his students – that he is helping to keep these future drivers safe, along with their crash test “drivers.”

“This class promotes an awareness of one of the most important responsibilities in a child’s life – driving a car – and understanding the risks and responsibilities that go along with that privilege,” he said. “We watched videos early on and they saw the results of car crashes. I hope that in some small way I am influencing them to drive safely.”

Many of McKenna’s students were moved by the crash test unit; especially by the videos that they watched early on.

“There’s actually a place that does crash testing of cars, and certain models did terrible. One flipped over,” said Lyndsey Gibb. “It was very scary to see. You have to always make sure to wear a seat belt.”

To ensure that his students get the message on car safety, McKenna ends his lesson with a true crash test, placing his own egg into a “convertible” he’s created.

“No top, no air bag, no seat belt,” he announced.

As he puts his car on the runway, the students again brace for impact, as they know what’s about to take place. They watch as if in slow motion, as McKenna’s car hits the end of the track and the “driver” is ejected completely from the automobile, soaring into the air and landing in a nearby trash can, sure not to survive the crash.

“This is STEM education at its best,” said David Regine, technology coordinator for Cranston Public Schools. “They put a name, an acronym to STEM education, but we’ve been doing this type of thing here for years.”

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