Kenny, M. C., & Clayton, P. (2024, July), GIFTS: Crushing Cardboard: A Technical Design Challenge for First-Year Students   Paper presented at 15th Annual First-Year Engineering Experience Conference (FYEE), Boston, Massachusetts. 10.18260/1-2--48617

\bibitem{asee_peer_48617}
  Kenny, M. C., \& Clayton, P. (2024, July), \emph{GIFTS: Crushing Cardboard: A Technical Design Challenge for First-Year Students }
  Paper presented at 15th Annual First-Year Engineering Experience Conference (FYEE), Boston, Massachusetts.
  10.18260/1-2--48617

Melissa C Kenny and Patricia Clayton.  "GIFTS: Crushing Cardboard: A Technical Design Challenge for First-Year Students ".  15th Annual First-Year Engineering Experience Conference (FYEE), Boston, Massachusetts, 2024, July.  ASEE Conferences, 2024.  https://peer.asee.org/48617 Internet.  21 Dec, 2024

\bibitem{asee_peer_48617}
  Melissa C Kenny and Patricia Clayton.
  "GIFTS: Crushing Cardboard: A Technical Design Challenge for First-Year Students ".
  \emph{15th Annual First-Year Engineering Experience Conference (FYEE), Boston, Massachusetts, 2024, July}.
  ASEE Conferences, 2024.
  https://peer.asee.org/48617 Internet.  21 Dec, 2024

@INPROCEEDINGS{asee_peer_48617
author = "Melissa C Kenny and Patricia Clayton"
title = "GIFTS: Crushing Cardboard: A Technical Design Challenge for First-Year Students "
booktitle = "15th Annual First-Year Engineering Experience Conference (FYEE)"
year = "2024"
month = "July"
address = "Boston, Massachusetts"
publisher = "ASEE Conferences"
note = {https://peer.asee.org/48617}
number = {10.18260/1-2--48617}
}

TY  - CPAPER
AB  - This GIFTS paper describes a first-year engineering design challenge which allows students to explore and apply technical skills to an engineering problem with minimal pre-requisite knowledge. Introducing technical skills in the first year of engineering education can pose certain challenges. Students in this course enter with no pre-requisite knowledge in math or science and many are not sure if they will continue as engineering majors. Thus, course projects and concepts must provide all necessary information for student success while also providing a glimpse of the problems that engineers solve and the technical tools they may use. In this project, students first explore basic mechanics and statics principles which introduce forces and solving simple static systems. They are then given a problem to solve: how can they build a corrugated cardboard support (like the legs of their chairs or table) which can withstand the largest force before failure? Students quickly go through the design process in small teams, including defining the problem and design constraints, brainstorming a solution, and ultimately building a corrugated cardboard prototype. They then test their prototype using a tabletop hand crank materials testing machine to view in real-time the force withstood by their prototype as it is compressed. They record each failure event of their prototype as it's structure is affected by the load and make observations throughout testing. Students must discuss why they think their prototype behaved how it did and how they might remedy each failure event and ultimately create an improved design. Finally, students begin a basic exploration of programming skills in order to graph and perform a simple analysis of the data. They apply their results to a final statics problem in which they consider how their support may be used to hold a load on a bench with a specific factor of safety. This project applies mechanics principles, the design process, experimentation, introductory programming, and consideration of failure and factor of safety into a simple hands-on project with minimal pre-requisite knowledge. 
AU  - Melissa C Kenny
AU  - Patricia Clayton
CY  - Boston, Massachusetts
DA  - 2024/07/28
PB  - ASEE Conferences
TI  - GIFTS: Crushing Cardboard: A Technical Design Challenge for First-Year Students 
UR  - https://peer.asee.org/48617
DO  - 10.18260/1-2--48617
ER  -