Popular Mechanics: Becoming a Designer of Machines

This resource aimed at upper primary contains a series of lessons which look at the means by which machines (cams, levers, gears and pulleys) transform force into movement. The first lesson provides the context for the project in the form of a story, where students are asked to create a counter to count visitors to a shop and/or create mechanical toys to tell stories. Children explore a range of toys and mechanical devices identifying features like gears, cams and axles and thinking about how they transmit and transform movement. In the following lesson children explore gears and cams in everyday objects, looking at how they work and gathering the knowledge they need to create their own mechanical objects. The next lesson involves applying the knowledge they have gained to design, create and modify a mechanical object (a toy or a counter). Finally they evaluate the process of creating the mechanical objects, discussing how and why they may have modified them.

These resources were produced by The European project ENGINEER, under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial 4.0 International License.