In this 45-minute introductory activity, students reverse-engineer a flower to glean design ideas for new products.
Objectives
- Students will be able to explain how biomimicry can be used to enhance engineering design.
- Students will be able to describe the process to reverse engineer an object.
- Students will be able to explain how brainstorming in a team can lead to more creative ideas.
Reverse engineering is the process of discovering the technical principles of an object by taking it apart and carefully studying its different components. In this activity students work in small groups to study a flower by dissecting, drawing, and describing its parts. Studying the flower in this way will help students better understand how the flower functions as a whole and they will practice what designers do when they carefully observe an organism to better understand how its s work and what can be learned from them.
Once students understand how the flower works, they then brainstorm designs using the flower as their model and make sketches of their ideas. For example, they might learn how a flower’s petals shed water, leading to ideas for waterproof materials. In an extension activity, students select a favorite animals or plant and reverse engineer it (on paper or in their minds) and think of new engineering design applications inspired by the organism.
This activity is hosted on TeachEngineering and provided with alignments to NGSS (MS-ETS1-1, MS-ETS1-2) and the International Technology and Engineering Educators Association standards for Technology. The lesson plan also includes modification ideas for younger or older students.
