Dispenser Designs

Student Worksheet: You are the Engineer!

 You are a team of engineers which has to tackle the challenge of reengineering the handheld cellophane tape dispenser to be used by a person with limited strength and the use of only one hand.

 Activity Steps
1. Review the various Student Reference Sheets.  
2. Your team has been provided with examples of different designs of cellophane dispensers.  Review these and determine the decisions engineers made (cost, durability, design, user needs) when developing this variation on the product.  Complete the questions below:

Pick two dispenser designs and compare them, then answer the questions below:

a. Which design do you think was less expensive to manufacture?  Why do you think it cost less to make? (consider materials, size, other factors)

b. What are the needs met by the more expensive dispenser?  What do you think the engineers thought the prospective users cared most about? (consider aesthetics, durability, other factors)

	

Student Worksheet: You are the Engineer! (continued)

3. Next, your team of "engineers" must develop a new design for a dispenser that can be used by a person with limited strength and the use of only one hand.  Think about the needs of the user and how your design might be an improvement on what is currently available.  Consider aesthetics, and the ethics of making only minor adjustments to someone else's patented design. 

4. Draw a sketch of your design on a separate page, then build a working model, and present to the class.  

5. While your team's working model will be made of simple classroom materials, what materials your final dispenser would be made from.  

6. How would this impact the manufacturing process?  

7. What is the price you would sell this dispenser for?  Can you make it for this price?

8. In redesigning the product, what rights does the patent holder of the original product have?  Should they be compensated if your new design sells well?

9. Evaluate/reflect on your design and those developed by the other "engineering" teams in your class using the attached worksheet.

      Dispenser Designs

Student Worksheet: Evaluation/Reflection

 Use this worksheet to evaluate the different designs developed by the "engineer" teams in your class.

1. What challenges did you face in executing your working model?

2. Did you find you needed to rework your plan when going through the model phase?  If you did, how did your design change?

3. Which design created by another team did you think worked best?  Why?

4. Based on what you saw the other teams develop, do you think you could now create an even better design?  What aspects of other designs would you incorporate in your team's model?  Why?

5.  Did you find that there were many ways to solve this challenge?  If so, what does that tell you about the engineering of everyday products created in real life?

6.  Do you think you would have been able to create your new design if you had not been working in a team?  What are the advantages of teamwork vs. working alone?