{"id":10028,"date":"2012-01-16T19:31:31","date_gmt":"2012-01-16T19:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/d45h139.public.uconn.edu\/sites\/news\/?p=10028"},"modified":"2025-01-31T00:02:05","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T05:02:05","slug":"cheney-students-enjoy-engineering-lessons-video-included","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2012\/01\/cheney-students-enjoy-engineering-lessons-video-included\/","title":{"rendered":"Cheney Students Enjoy Engineering Lessons [Video included]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>At Howell Cheney Technical High School<\/a> in Manchester, CT, students enjoy a unique learning opportunity enabling them to explore engineering concepts and to apply these principles in often fun ways, thanks to a National Science Foundation-funded program that embeds engineering graduate students in selected classrooms.<\/p>\n

During the fall semester, Cheney Tech freshmen taking CADD coursework were mentored by Chemical Engineering doctoral student Neil Spinner. Throughout the term, they explored a number of principles and engaged in hands-on lessons. For one lesson, students were asked to design a device that would protect an uncooked egg from breaking when dropped from varying heights.<\/p>\n

Watch this video to see how the students applied their classroom lessons, with varying levels of success: Cheney Egg Drop<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For the challenge, the freshmen were allowed to \u201cpurchase\u201d their choice of materials to be used as cushioning for a raw, uncracked egg.\u00a0 The materials available for purchase included balloons, bubble wrap, paper, rubber bands, straws, duct tape, and ribbon. Teams then assembled their materials into a cushioning nest that they hoped would keep the egg intact when the contraption was dropped.<\/p>\n

Neil explained, \u201cThis was a lesson simulating real-life engineering where limited resources and\/or funding is available, and a certain task or goal must be achieved \u2013 in this case, having the egg survive.\u201d The task involved teamwork: groups of two to three worked together on any single device. Neil noted that the challenge also entailed principles of mathematics and physics, with the exercise providing a live demonstration of the force of impact, and principles of falling aerodynamics of various designs such as parachutes and balloons.<\/p>\n

The GK-12 program<\/a> at UConn is supported by a $2.7 million NSF award and is intended to provide graduate students unique learning opportunities that will broadly prepare them for professional and scientific careers in the 21st century, while invigorating K-12 classrooms with valuable STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) lessons.\u00a0 UConn elected to focus on the often underserved Connecticut Tech Schools, which provide an excellent education for technically-inclined students across the state. For more coverage of the GK-12 program at UConn, click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At Howell Cheney Technical High School in Manchester, CT, students enjoy a unique learning opportunity enabling them to explore engineering concepts and to apply these principles in often fun ways, thanks to a National Science Foundation-funded program that embeds engineering graduate students in selected classrooms.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":122,"featured_media":224938,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1866],"tags":[2491],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[43],"class_list":["post-10028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-engr","tag-aerodynamics"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 05:37:51","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/122"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10028"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224940,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10028\/revisions\/224940"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/224938"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10028"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=10028"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=10028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}