Solve a World Problem

Gun Violence

Our problem

Starting our project, the first step of the engineering design cycle is to ask about the problem, our problem being Gun violence in the United States. The second step of the engineering design cycle, and also the most important is to research the problem and find out the need, the constraints, the cause, and the group of people for which the problem effects. Researching the problem is extremely important because when finding a solution, it is crucial to understand what the problem is and why it happens.

We began by researching different articles and finding reliable sources with good information that we could understand. Following step 2 of the engineering design cycle, we began step 3 and 4 where we brainstormed multiple solutions, whether they were feasible or not, and then selected our most promising solutions. Although it isn't a direct step on the engineering design cycle, planning out a time management chart is important to having a promising final product. We planned out our goals and time periods by creating a Gantt chart. Because our solution involved protection on guns, it is logical to not make a prototype because of the setting being a school, however, we still created a 3d model to demonstrate our product and how it worked.

Engineering design cycle steps

Step 1.) The first step of the design cycle is to ask and identify the need. As a class, we compiled a list of as many problems in the world that we could think of. Me and my group picked gun violence for our problem to solve and began to work on step 2

Step 2.) Step 2 is research the problem, and we began to work on this by finding reliable sources online and taking annotations about the information. After around a couple days we shared our information and saw what overlapped and labeled that as more important for understanding our problem.

Step 3.) The third step is to develop possible solutions. We made a long list of solutions that were good and bad, but the idea of making a list was to get our minds flowing so we could build off each others ideas.

Step 4.) Our solutions we picked were a child lock on the gun's safety switch and keypad protected weapons. Step 4 is to pick the most promising solution and we thought that these solutions would work the best so we ended up choosing these.

Step 5.) Step 5 is design a prototype. We designed our solution's prototype by creating a 3d model of how the mechanics would work if we did have our prototype in real life.

Step 6.) we couldn't actually build our mechanism to test in real life for step 6, which is test and evaluate your prototype, because we cannot build a mechanism involving guns in a school setting, so we just kept our 3d model.

Data analysis

We had many graphs in our final presentation, but these are the two with the most interesting data.

Geographical data

This graph is very interesting because it shows how many deaths occur in each state. We can see that states such as Montana and Louisiana have very dark colors, meaning they have the highest gun death rate. This is likely because those states have much less people and are more rural, meaning the gun laws will be less strict and less enforced.

Age-deaths graph

This is also a really interesting graph because it isn't something that is really acknowledged much by people and isn't well known. We see when we look at the graph that the second highest death rate relating to gun violence is the age group between 18-33 years old. This is likely due to financial instability and separation from parent causing higher risk of suicide because of the lack of comfort. The most jarring on this graph however, is definitely the 51-75 year old age group having the highest number of deaths. This is probably caused because people who are that old are probably losing loved ones and feel that their life matters much less than someone who is young, leading to suicide.

Reflection

The thing that I really feel like I excelled at during this project was cultural competency. I learned a lot about things that I wasn't aware of before that I found really shocking. This project taught me a lot about things like suicide and mental health which I think was something I am glad that I know more about.

Something I think I missed the opportunity to improve on was my compassion to other people in my group. I think that a lot of times I was unnecessarily rude or disrespectful to people in my group because my group was friends that I felt comfortable with. A lot of times I found myself getting off task or wandering to another table when I could have been helping a partner or encouraging someone to stay focused on the task. Overall though, I think my collaboration mainly improved and I am proud of that because it was one of my previous goals to improve upon, and I think that this project was a great way to start off the year good.

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