TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Creepy Silly Putty
Students learn about viscoelastic material behavior, such as strain rate dependence and creep, by using silly putty, an easy-to-make polymer material. They learn how to make silly putty, observe its behavior with different strain rates,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Preconditioning Balloons
Students use balloons (a polymer) to explore preconditioning a viscoelastic material behavior that is important to understand when designing biomedical devices. They improve their understanding of preconditioning by measuring the force...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Viscoelasticity
Students are introduced to the concept of viscoelasticity and some of the material behaviors of viscoelastic materials, including strain rate dependence, stress relaxation, creep, hysteresis and preconditioning. Viscoelastic material...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Tissue Mechanics
Learners reflect on their experiences making silly putty (the previous hands-on activity in the unit), especially why changing the borax concentration alters the mechanical properties of silly putty and how this pertains to tissue...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Silly Semi Solids
Groups of students make a polymer out of household items. They then experiment with the polymer to determine its various properties.