Day Eleven: MDOT and China

Dr. Huang started our day off with an introduction of herself and a description of the things that we would be doing today. Two ladies from MDOT Educational Outreach Dept. visited with us today. They spoke in great depth about MDOT and designing different forms transportation. We also experimented with three  different activities that we could actually implement in our classes. First, we made a rocket and practiced shooting them in the hallway. Next, we paired up and made Truss bridges. Each group had to show their bridge and use marbles to see how much weight your bridge could hold. My groups bridge came in 2nd place (see pics below). Then, we made boats out of a 12 inch piece of aluminum foil. After we designed and made our bridges, we then had to see how many marbles could our boat hold before sinking to the bottom of a tub of water. My groups boat could only hold 21 marbles but the winning groups boat held about 321 marbles before sinking to the bottom of the tub. We determined that more surface area in your boat determines how many marbles the boat could hold. A square bottom with a lot of surface will hold more marbles.
At the end of the day,  Dr. Huang spoke to us and showed us lots of pictures from China. She also talked to us about her recent visit to China, which is her birth place, the culture, and most importantly, the educational system there.