CreateKit Mechanical Grabber Kit
Students express creative engineering skills as they design and build a machine to lift, hold, and throw a ball!
Working in small teams, students conceptualize, sketch, and build a mechanical grabber to perform tasks. After brainstorming and sketching their idea, they use balsa wood, popsicle sticks, straws, string, tape, and other provided materials to build their grabber. They can also incorporate a hydraulics kit into their design to discover how it provides a mechanical advantage when holding, moving, or launching a table tennis ball. This allows them to experiment with pneumatic and hydraulic systems to learn about compressible and incompressible substances. Students use the Engineering Design Process to work through any issues they may discover when testing their design. In the process, they learn how to make changes to improve their design. Included lesson direction highlights activity ideas to get class activities started, details setup instructions, activities by grade level, learning objectives, and teaching suggestions to expand lessons for up to 24 students. Recommended for Middle School and up.
Kit includes:
- Popsicle Sticks, Pack of 1,000
- String, 1 Spool
- Cardboard, 100 Sheets
- Straws, Pack of 500
- Tape, 6 Rolls
- Hydraulics Kits, 2 Ea
- Brads, 200 Ea
- Table Tennis Balls, 24 Ea
- Balsa Wood, 4 Packs