Handling hovercrafts : designing a project curriculum to introduce girls to mechanical engineering

The Women's Technology Program was created in MIT's Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department to expose girls to engineering topics and to encourage them to choose engineering majors in college. For the upcoming launch of a WTP in the mechanical engineering department, a new curriculum is being developed. The objective of this research was to create a capstone design project for the WTP-ME curriculum that sparks high school girls' interest in design and manufacturing. A hovercraft design contest was chosen as the basis for the project because of the range of concepts it encompasses and because the competitive nature of the project would encourage cooperation and motivation among the students. To test the project's feasibility, several hovercrafts were built using different materials and geometries. A list of materials was created and contest rules were constructed based on the results, and one hovercraft design was selected to be used as a template hovercraft for the students.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Yang, Sandie (Sandie S.)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Carol Livermore.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/36681

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/36681