Hello! This blog post is the summary and story of my latest Scimatics project, The Ultimate Design Challenge (fiery explosion, fiery explosion!). In this project we learned about calculating the area and volume of different shapes and then we made an object in Tinkercad. The big idea for this project is “The relationship between surface area and volume of 3D objects can be used to describe, measure, and compare spatial relationships.”

Something that we did again that we do in every Scimatics project is the textbooks and worksheets. I also feel weird when I have to write about these because its always the same thing and I don’t know what to talk about. What we learned this time was learning to calculate the area and volume of different 3 dimensional objects. We learned how to do rectangular prisms, triangular prisms, and cylinders. I don’t what else to say. Oh, if you want to find out how to calculate different shapes just looks it up. All the formulas are there. 

The next thing we started doing was… the finale product! Yes we are already doing the final product! For the final product we had to choose and design a object in Tinkercad. Tinkercad is a online, free to use 3D modelling software. Once we had chosen an object, we had to make another choice. Whether we wanted to make our object have a higher volume or area. One final thing we had to use at leasts three objects. I chose to do a water bottle (it was the first thing I saw) and make it have a larger volume because with a water bottle you want to hold lots of water. I started working. I looked to see if Tinkercad had any water bottle objects already in there catalogue (I didn’t want to just copy them). They did. But it was fine because their water bottle was a plastic water bottle, while I wanted to make a metal water bottle. I started working on my first draft. 

As soon as I started I realized that making that curve to the lip of the bottle would be tough. My first draft was simple but effective. It was just a cylinder with a sphere combined with it at the top. Then I put a much smaller cylinder on the put to act as the lip of where you would put ur mouth. Finally I put smushed, pancake cylinder on top for the cap. The flaw with this one as you probably have realized is how this is only four shapes. Not good. Something else I didn’t like about this design is how it ended up looking just like a canteen. Next draft.

The next draft I did I ended up deleting because… I don’t know. I like suffering and trying to remember what I did? What I did was a cylinder for the main base where the water goes, then I tried to circle lots and lots of half cylinders to try to make a perfect curve like a real water bottle. That however, is really difficult to do. I also had to calculate the volume later so that means that other lapping lots of different objects is a no go. Let’s think of something else. 

Next next draft I did what I did for the start of everyone, cylinder cylinder. Then I tried using a hemisphere for the curve at the top, like in my first draft. It wasn’t exactly what I had in mind but it was enough. I also did the lip and cap, but I did tweak the dimensions so that it didn’t look like a canteen. At this point I had six shapes. I also didn’t just want to add random shapes or add shapes where there didn’t need to be any. So I added a handle. I know most water bottles don’t have water bottles but some do so…. I thought for a while and I couldn’t think of anything to add to a water bottle that would make sense. Because of this I gave up and just added a filler shape, a logo. I made the logo a red square and named the bottle The Max 20 Bottle. 

Now that I had my object designed, it was time to present it to the class. But before I could do that I needed a presentation. My presentation was pretty simple, a page that introduces the bottle and my goal, a page with all the shapes, then 10 pages for each shape with their respective surface area and volume, then a page with the ratio and finally a page to say goodbye.

Now I am going to write a little bit about each Curricular Competency. I will be going top down.

Applying and innovating: Contribute to care for self, others, community, and world through personal or collaborative approaches. The proficient for this is using all your class time effectively without distractions. For this project I did use all class time effectively. I took breaks at times so that I could work better when I wasn’t working. However I still had distractions. I actually think this is unreasonable for us to do because we can’t control others or our environment. I can say though I did my best to stay on task on not get distracted. 

The next one is Reasoning and Analyzing: Model mathematics in contextualized experiences. The proficient for this was A 3D object is designed using TinkerCad or other design software. The design is optimized for either maximum volume or maximum surface area. The design should include at least 10 basic 3D shapes. (you should each design components/parts of a larger model or scene for groups of 2 or 3) I did do this. I don’t quite know what else to say here about this. Go look at the startish of this post if you want to know more. 

The finale Curricular Competency was Communicating and Representing: Explain and justify mathematical ideas and decisions. The proficiency for this was The surface area and volume are measured calculated, and compared by ratio. These factors are explained in detail in a keynote presentation to the class. I did also do this. I was able to get a larger volume than surface area and I showed that in my presentation. The ratio was 3.6 volume:1 surface area. 

See ya around and goodbye, Judah G!