Museum of Science, Boston

Live Presentation [Return to listing page]

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This live Museum offering is designed to introduce students and visitors to the engineering design cycle. By participating in a hands-on activity to design, build, and test a prototype solution to a given problem, visitors have a fun and engaging experience with engineering and innovation processes.

The challenges vary and are offered in the Gordon Current Science & Technology Center. The activities are recommended for children and teens in grades 4 - 10 as well as for small family groups. Each activity takes about 20 minutes.

Here is a listing of the challenges currently in rotation. Follow the link at the bottom of the page to download worksheets to use while participating in the activities.

Animal House Challenge: Design a house or toy for one of the Museum's live animals.

Over 120 animals live at the Museum of Science in our exhibits and in the Museum's Live Animal Center. Animal center staff regularly provide these animals with toys and houses to play in as part of an animal enrichment program, which allows them to maintain species-specific behavior and contributes to their overall well-being.

Participants will research a particular animal and design a house or toy that will encourage each animal's specific behaviors. Each house or toy must fit into the animal's cage, support the animal's size and weight, and be constructed of non-toxic materials. Completed designs are brought to the animals each day.

Echo Base Bobsleds: Design and build a bobsled to compete in the Olympics or race down the icy hills of Star Wars' Hoth.

Bobsled racing is a very technical sport; it combines science and engineering to design the most efficient sled. Through this activity, participants explore concepts such as friction, gravity, and air resistance and their impact on acceleration.

Working individually or in small groups, visitors use recycled materials to design, build, and test their bobsled on our 8-foot long bobsled track. Get a first-hand experience of the design process that scientists and engineers undergo by conceptualizing the problem, designing and testing a prototype, and making modifications as necessary to optimize the solution.

Ewok Escape New!

Can you create a vehicle that will carry an Ewok to safety? Explore physics concepts as you build a balancing mechanism that travels down a tightrope.

Ships Ahoy! Come aboard and design your own wind-powered sailing vessel.

Using simple, colorful, and recycled materials, students design and build a model vessel to achieve the optimal use of wind power. Find a hull and sail configuration that moves across our water track in the fastest time, or carries the largest cargo of treasure. This is a fun, hands-on activity that reinforces the engineering design cycle. Students can apply their knowledge and understanding of wind power, buoyancy, displacement, friction, and lift to their sailboat design.

Shipwrecked: Design and build the tools you need to survive being shipwrecked on a deserted island.

Do you have what it takes to survive and be rescued? Working in small teams, participants rely on their creativity to design survival tools using the materials provided in their "supplies crate." Learn about teamwork, brainstorming, innovation, and creative material reuse by trying to create a protective shelter, a method for gathering food, and a signal for help. Once they come up with their designs, the teams will test them out for feasibility before having a "design review" with the program staff.

Trophy Triathlon: Design a trophy to support a tennis, soccer, or bowling ball.

Explore such concepts as material properties, varied shape strengths, center of gravity, and structural design by building a "trophy" that can support either a tennis, soccer, or bowling ball. With only limited materials to work with, each team must build a tall trophy that is strong enough to balance their chosen ball. Visitors are encouraged to test and redesign their trophies as often as they like until they achieve their ultimate design.

Whirling Windmills: Design a windmill that can harness the power of the wind.

For centuries, people have used windmills to harness the power of the wind for such tasks as grinding grain and pumping water. Even today, some propose using wind farms as a form of "green" energy. Through this activity, participants act as design engineers, focusing on the testing and redesign parts of the engineering design process. They will learn about independent variables and data-driven design by testing various blade designs and configurations and placing them in a wind stream.

Activities Archive

Although these activities are no longer offered as part of Design Challenges at the Museum, they still make great exercises for home and school.

Aviary Architect: Design a birdhouse to keep a bird warm in the winter or cool in the summer sun.

Working in small teams, participants learn about such concepts as energy efficiency, properties of light, and heating and cooling principles while they design, build, and test an energy-efficient roof for a birdhouse.

With program staff, each team tests several roofing materials under a heat lamp and records how much the heat rises over time. Using this information, they design a composite roof to achieve their design goal of keeping the birdhouse warm or cool, then test again to see if they have engineered a successful solution. Visitors may keep redesigning and retesting as many times as schedules permit, focusing on using the testing part of the engineering design cycle to guide data-driven design.

Kinematic Fanatic: Design an automated hand-stamping machine.

We stamp a lot of hands at the Museum every day. In this activity, participants get a chance to design, build, and test an automated hand-stamping machine by borrowing concepts from existing designs and modifying them to fit their needs. They'll gain experience using gears and pulleys to explore concepts such as mechanical advantage, changing from rotary to linear motion, and altering timing in a machine.

Visitors are encouraged to modify their designs so that their stamp leaves a clearer image, to adjust the stamping mechanism to different hand sizes, or to allow more time to slide their hand underneath before the next stamping.

Reaction Contraption: Design a device to record reaction time.

Participants in grades 4 - 12 will design, program, and test a "reaction time recorder" using the Pico Cricket microcontroller system. Reaction time is a measure of how quickly a person can respond to a given stimulus. It is one of the most common measures of neurological function and can be affected by many factors including exercise, sleep, drugs, and alcohol.

Visitors will use their invention to test their reaction time to visual and auditory stimuli as well as determine which body part responds most quickly to a given stimuli (i.e. dominant vs. non-dominant hand, hand vs. foot, thumb vs. second finger, etc.).

Saturn Explorer: Protect your payload.

In this activity, visitors imagine they are designing a capsule to carry a sensitive payload to land on an unknown planet. Working within size and material constraints, teams will design and build a protective system for their "space capsule," learning about design tradeoffs, material properties, and designing for hostile and unknown terrains.

To test their designs, teams will choose a landing surface at random, launch their capsule, and examine how well their design protected their payload.

For materials to use with these activities, choose from the documents below. The zip file contains worksheets for use at home or school.

Fee: Free with Museum Exhibit Halls admission

Reservation: Program cannot be reserved in advance, but specific challenges can be requested for student group visits. Educators can email designchallenges@mos.org for more information. Capacity for workshop is 50.

This project is funded in part by a Congressionally mandated award from the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). NIST's funding is not an endorsement of any products, opinions, or services.