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Essential Question and Scenario

Essential Question: How do engineered materials (i.e., composite design) affect performance of materials in various products, such as sports equipment?

Project Description

• Engagement Scenario (must be authentic)

My mother and father both play golf and I’m amazed that she can hit the ball nearly as far as he can. They admit that practice has a lot to do with it, but give much of the credit to their light-weight clubs that have so much springiness and strength. I’ve been told that these “space-age” composite materials are the same as the ones used in other athletic protective equipment that I use like shin guards in soccer, football helmets and shoulder pads, tennis rackets, and snow and water skis. Can you think of any other high performance athletic equipment that use such materials? These materials even find their way into fighter jets and drag racing cars.

In my Automated Materials Joining course, we are learning about composite materials, many of which are used in the athletic equipment industries. Today, the teacher said we will work in teams to investigate composite materials. Our team has the task to pick the piece of equipment we use most often or like the best to research its manufacturing process. We will make the composite material by laying it out in sheets; filling it with epoxy, laying out laminates in various directions and testing the constructed materials.

This all sounds so different from other courses where we use materials given to us. I’m not sure how all of this will work, but I’m really interested in learning about how materials are made.

The fun part is after we have tested to determine the best combination of materials and the best manufacturing arrangement, we will gather the data and make an analysis of what we find as a group. We will then make the actual piece of athletic equipment and test it for endurance again gathering data to analyze for impact strength, ductility, tensile strength, mass, weight, strength to weight ratio, or bending torsion.

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