Is this the best material?

Students and teachers talk about testing materials in year 11.

Duration: 02:47

Transcript

Steve Andrew: So the progression on from the junior materials testing and the knowledge that they gained goes through to senior level. It’s more now for the outcome development part of the practice standard. So, we’re covering 1.4, and the work that our, the prior learning that our students have done actually gives them much more understanding of the process that we need to go through, the reasons that we are developing, we are doing the testing, and how to use the outcomes.

Student 1: This year in year 11 technology at St John’s College we are making a luge. It’s going to be raced in Minogue Park. We are focussing on the design of the luge, and there’s a lot of work we do on the testing.

Steve: At year 11 with our luge project we have some materials specifications like the amount of flex that we have in the luge.

Student 1: So that it’s not just shaking

Student 2: So it’s nice and smooth.

Student 1: Smooth ride for the pilot.

Steve: The environmental resistant side of it.

Student 1: Oh we’ve got to think about the weather

Student 3: Oh yeah weather resistance.

Terry Mitchell: The emphasis is on testing and using the appropriate material for their project. And again they get to break things, they get to see what works and what doesn’t. What’s going to be strong and what isn’t. Then when it comes to actually selecting the materials for their own project, they can choose the appropriate materials.

Student 2: We glued sheets of plywood together. We put one lot in the press flat and one on its side and we checked which one was, had more tensile strength and which one was stronger. And the one on the flat had more tensile strength because it would bounce back after we had let the pressure go. It would bounce back, which was good because it would mean that there was a smoother ride because it would bounce up and down instead of just being very rigid.

Steve: The further we go with this materials testing, the more time it takes. Now projects sometimes become slightly smaller because of the time constraints. But, I’m realising how important it is to physically do this and I think that enriches the practice that we carry out.

Student 1: Early on in the testing, process testing, we went down the back of the school and we tested out some wheels on luges to see what type of wheels got us down the hill fastest. This was important because it helped us figure out what sort of wheels we are going to use on our luge to get the best momentum we can possibly get down the hill so on the day we can win the trophy.