Food Processing
The purpose of this unit is to understand the important role technology plays in feeding the world's population in the most efficient ways possible. Students are to build a machine that can separate foods from other byproducts reliably and quickly. Students will be provided with beans, rice, and rocks as materials. Each group should weigh their materials separately to develop a baseline weight for each material, mix the materials in a bag, use their machine to separate the materials and weigh them again to see how accurate their machine is. The ideal machine would be both very accurate and quick.
Minimum requirements.
Answer the questions and build a machine that separates the food (beans & rice) from the rocks.
Extra Mile.
Build a machine that separates all 3 items into separate containers/cups.
Build a machine that turns on and off automatically (yes you may start the program manually once per trial.)
Build a machine that is capable of returning materials to the cups
Include other items into the machine that would be helpful to producers.
Investigate. (Provide a statistic or fact to back up your answer)
What does it take to feed the world?
Why is the cost of food an important factor?
Why is efficiency such an important factor in food production?
List the resources you found that aided in your discovery.
Design.
Draw at least 2 designs, take pictures and post them to your web page, state why your group chose one over the other.
Plan.
Develop a goal for your team and a rough timeline to achieve it.
Create.
Build and test your machine.
Evaluate.
Using the testing skeleton test your robot to see how accurate and quickly the materials can be separated. What criteria will you use to decide whether your design is improving or not?
Attitudes in Technology.
How you use your time.
Wrap Up
Once you have completed the Evaluation phase of the project please take a picture of your finished product and a short movie of the robot in action. Place the movie and the picture on your web page and answer the following questions on your web page.
How does your robot work? (Outline how the materials are separated)
How close is your final design to your final drawing, what changed?
What is one thing your robot does well or as you intended?
What is one thing you would improve about your robot?
Resources.