Teach Engineering: Car Collision Testing & Tradeoffs: Don't Crack Humpty

Student groups are provided with a generic car base on which to design a device/enclosure to protect an egg as it rolls down a ramp at increasing slopes. During this activity, student teams design, build and test their prototype creations to meet the design challenge, and then perform basic mathematical calculations using collected data, including a summative cost-benefit ratio. Automotive manufacturers hire engineers to redesign cars in order to make them safer. This process always involves a trade-off between cost of manufacturing a new design and level of safety. After this activity, students will be able to recognize this trade-off and understand the concept of cost to benefit ratio.