For two weeks in January, students in Physical Science classes at Burlington High School researched, designed, built and tested chest protectors.
The chest protector project is part of the OpenSciEd curriculum, which is designed based on the way that students learn and begins with anchoring phenomena before students are tasked with using that information in critical thinking and hands-on projects.
“They are trying to design something to reduce force,” science teacher Brian Blake said. “We’ve studied momentum, gravity, weight, and mass times acceleration equals force, so we’re trying to find a way to limit force.”
Students first were tasked with researching bullet-proof vests and car bumpers to see how they work to dissipate force. They were then told to apply what they learned through that research to a design for a chest plate they would build using the following materials:
- Cotton balls
- Newspaper
- Plastic sacks
- Masking tape
- Duct tape
- Dixie cups
- Popsicle sticks
- Cardboard
- Rubber bands
- Index cards
- Glue
Working either alone or in groups of up to three, the students plotted and budgeted their designs (each material was assigned a cost, and each group could “spend” up to $300).
After getting approval of their design from their teacher, they set about building their chest plates.
The designs and material use varied greatly from group to group.
“This group over here, these guys have a whole pile of cardboard,” Blake said, pointing to a group working in the northwest corner of the lab. “No one in any class has ever used that many. And these guys over here are going to do something with 60 bags. No one’s ever done that before. There’s all these variations of people and ideas.”
One group planned to rely heavily on cotton balls.
“We’re putting cotton balls on the bottom and then we’re going to flip it over and crumple up newspaper into bigger balls, put a layer of them and then cardboard on top and then another layer of cotton balls,” freshman Bradie Chenoweth said. “We want it to absorb the impact instead of transferring it down to the metal plate.”
The impact Chenoweth was referring to was to be a metal rod dropped from three feet high onto the chest protector, which would be placed upon a metal plate that would measure the amount of force dropped upon it.
Each chest plate would be tested three times, Blake said, explaining that some plates become less effective as the tests go on, while others become more effective. In one class, a chest plate broke in a way that unintentionally created a spring effect, thus further reducing the amount of force that fell on the plate by diverting it away from the target.
Freshman Aurora Critser was curious about the bend that bullet proof vests and bumpers have, and she applied that same bend to her chest plate using cardboard, newspaper, bags and cotton balls.
Josie Newell, Florrah Mehaffy, and Saoirse Hermann made up the group using stacks of cardboard. Their goal, Hermann explained, was to build a table with bars on the side topped by a piece of cardboard.
“That way, the bar will catch on that and it won’t even touch the first layer,” Hermann said.
Their design turned out to be the most effective in their class, redirecting the force of the bar completely from the metal plate.
After the projects were tested, each group returned to their desks to determine what they possibly could have done differently to make their design more effective. They were also permitted to further test the strength of their chest plates by stepping on them. None of the plates appeared to be freshman-proof.
