Pearson High FabKids 21-10-11

Group 1

Bernard’s take on YESA workshop.

You have a flat perspex board. You can cut out anything. Car? Chair? House? What will it be? That's the task we got at the beginning of the day. We design a toy with a moving part, and get it lazer-prited from perspex.Oh yeah!

So our group (Kalilo, Eduard, Avishkar and Bernard) starded off with some brainstorming for a theme, and ultimately a design. It was going to be a toy from the transport industry.

Soon some prominent sketches of planes were surfacing. We put heads together and started sketching a full-scale plane on cardboard. It would have lock in parts with a moving rotor.

After that it was on to the PC's to redo the design on OpenOffice Draw. While this takes cosiderable time, it is accurate to tenth of a millimeter. We alligned everything to our own engineering standard, and our designed was cut out of cardboard. After some small corrections, it was off to be cut out of the final perspex.

Yes, our own desined plane proffesionally printed in perspex... awesome.

We started off the day with a session where we decided the theme of our toy and what we were planning on making, We were then grouped into groups of four. Once we were grouped we immediately started on the design of our toy, Our group decided to make an aeroplane, It had a propeller which formed as the moving part of the toy. We all contributed our own drawings of a plane, The group leader then chose the most simple plan out of the four. After a short break we started on the final design of our toy, This proved to take longer than we expected. Our measurements on the computer had to be precise and accurate for everything to be balanced.

Group 2

Clinton: construction Engineer

Zani: Media and Graphic artist

Remi: Team manager

Ezi: designer engineer

we Pearsonites were given the opportunity to take part in a FabKids project, which is part of the YESA(young engineers of South Afirca) project. only a limited amount of atudents were given the amazing honour to take part.

on the 21st of October 2011 the project took place.

We were divided into groups of 4.

We were given the task to design a toy, we then took it to the next level.Our model was insipered by the job career AEROSPACE engineering.We then decided to build a rotating aeroplane.

Group 3

Yesa Challenge

We began the day with an eye-opening speech describing how hard it is to get into the various careers. This put light on how we as learners need to show assertiveness and dedication to become something of worth one day.

We were then bombarded by brainteasing questions to help us to broaden the scope of our closed minds. This really showed us that everyday science is inadequate and impratical, when one considers the creative thinking and decision-making that an engineer has to make on day to day basis.

We then divided into groups and were asked what project we would like to undertake. We answered with blank looks and silence even when confronted with posssible options. This showed how unprepared we as learners are to make decisions assertively and confidently.

After finally deciding on a topic and theme, our group departed to a quiet place to brainstorm possible ideas. Things were slow at first and the group struggled to put ideas on paper. The plan was to make a submarine desktidy with a military theme. It took some firm decision-making to get the final design done as complicated features had to be ommitted due to time pressure.

It was then up to the design engineer to make sure the design was correctly inputed into the computer program. This was farely simple and the group managed to do this easily and efficiently.

The design was then printed onto a new piece of the cardboard making sure that all errors were corrected.

Group 4

We started off with a lecture about passing rates in SA. It was interesting and the facts that was pointed out was quite shocking. After that we split up in our groups and got our asighnments. We jumbled up ideas of what to desighn and eventually build. There was a few options but our group decieded to design our own see-saw. We started drawing up sketches and discussing how we are going to tackle this task. Later on while we were designomg our see-saw, we realised its not going to be enough work for the day and realise we were going to need something else aswell. We chose to build a round-about aswell. After that we skeched out our drawings on cardboard adding the necceary mesergements. There after we drew it over on the pc and cut in out with the laser printer. We constructed our playgrund out of the cardboard. We are then going to cut our designs out in perspect and contruct it up again. Ou assighment for day was finished.

We learnt a lot today and its an experience we will never forget. Thank you and we hope toe see you in the near future.