Title: The Engineering Process
Course: Electricity (4th Grade)

In science and engineering we normally use a process to help us make decisions. For this assignment, you are to work in your group to come up with a process that will help you make decisions or choose a product to solve a problem.

process - a step by step plan to help you organize your thoughts and decisions.

Helps on how to organize steps to help decision making.

1. Normally when engineers begin a process they start with a problem like "My lunch bag always rips by the time it is lunch time"; or "My pencils always break during math time;" or "Steel and aluminum are always mixed up in the garbage. The recycle company want them separated."

2. What comes next after identifying a problem? Start a chart with at least 5 steps to think what an engineer would do to solve their problem. You can fill in the steps in any order.

3. Compare your steps with the steps of the other groups in the class. What steps were the same and what steps were different? Choose all of the steps that were the same for all. Step back and look to see if there are things missing. Agree as a class to add missing steps.

4. Now you are going to practice using those steps in your team. All teams must complete the same experiment. Everyone in the team must keep a lab book of the engineering process that you will post on-line for this assignment. Everyone will get a grade recorded for this assignment. If you don't hand something in (even though you work with someone in your group that did post an assignment) you will not get a grade.

5. You may as a class, choose an experiment in which to complete or you may all just start with the following problem:

How do you make a light bulb light up using wire, a battery, and a light?

(Make sure you record what you do, because your experiment will be passed to the next group to try and complete.)

Engineers always:
________name and date their experiments
________write in their lab books who they were working with
________what materials they used
________They are also quite detailed about what they did so others can benefit from their study and complete their exact experiment so that others will get the exact result as they
________Make sure to write down everything you tried and what happened

What are the limitations of this process? When will it be helpful?
Post your experimental process individually and answer the above two questions in your post.

Good luck and have lots of fun!