Spring into Action
It was a busy day at Karkhana. We were trying to figure out some activities that could help students understand energy in action. After researching for a moment, a group of our team members came with a very exciting conclusion, ‘A PRANK BOX’. The basic idea of the activity is that it’s a small box with a cover and something pops out when we open it. We can teach students about how the stored energy in a box is converted into energy in action when we open the cover of the box.
We solved one problem but there was another problem again. How can we make something pop out from a box? Sunoj
came up with an idea and tried to make a spring out of thin length of rods. It did not really work that well but it gave us idea about how we could solve the problem. We then tried to make spring using different materials like Acrylic sheets, plastic bottles. Plastic bottles finally did the job. It was good enough to solve our problem for the moment.
We really found a cool trick to make spring using plastic bottles. We attached a long rod to a drilling machine to help us roll
those sheets in a shape of spring. We then used hot gun to soften the acrylic sheets. Finally, we were done with a spring.
We made a box using four of these springs attached to each corner of a box.
In the meantime, we were trying to make another box with a different mechanism. We came up with something like a cloth clip instead of spring and attached it to the box. We put small pieces of papers inside the box. You could visibly see those pieces of papers flying all around as you opened the cover of the box. You could actually use these box for someone’s birthday
too.
We had a lot of fun and we learnt a lot by making this activity. But it’s not just about fun. This activity was a resultant to make students understand about Energy-In-Action.
We failed, multiple times, but through constant iterations, we came up to a model which we felt good about, and that has been the thing for every activities we have designed at Karkhana. Failing, Learning, Making, and Improving.