Cadeia Amazônia
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About this simulation
A 90-minute, 4-round basic Express simulation on running the engineering design process under real constraints, for high-school CTE engineering, pre-engineering and engineering-technology programs: turning a community partner's need into measurable requirements and constraints before choosing a solution (NGSS HS-ETS1-1); prototyping cheaply and testing one variable at a time against a baseline; reporting every trial, including one that was never run (NSPE Code of Ethics II.3.a); choosing the final design with a decision matrix whose weights were agreed before the scoring (HS-ETS1-3); and handing off a low-cost water filter with build instructions, a maintenance card and a pilot, told exactly what it was tested for and that clear water is not proven safe to drink (40 CFR 141, Subpart Q, Appendix B).
Project Lead The Way-style courses are named as a context only. Noemí Tafolla, 16, is the fictional team lead of a four-student design team in the pre-engineering class of the fictional Sangre Vista High School near Española, New Mexico, designing a filter for the cloudy rainwater cistern of the fictional Cañada Seca Community Center, from September to November 2027.
Round by round you decide how the requirements are written and how the team is organized, how the team prototypes and tests, how a missing trial is reported and how the final design is chosen, and what the partner is told and how the filter is handed off; at each design review the design is projected again with the decisions taken so far.
Each round is scored on the clean water verified, the materials scrapped, the untested claims, the grant left and the partner's confidence, with open violations shown alongside; reporting a test result that was never run or telling the partner the filtered water is safe to drink caps the score. English with Spanish.
What participants learn
After the session, participants will be able to:
- Turn a community partner's need into measurable requirements and constraints for flow, clarity, cost, cleaning time and power after a visit, a sample and an interview, before choosing any solution
- Test cheap low-fidelity prototypes against a baseline, changing one variable at a time with the same rig and test water, three trials each and every reading logged
- Choose a final design with a decision matrix whose weights were agreed with the partner before any prototype was scored, using only the test data that exists
- Justify reporting every trial, including one that was never run, rather than writing in a reading or reporting only the best result
- Produce a written hand-off that states what the design was and was not tested for, with build instructions, a maintenance card and a pilot
Prerequisites
- A first introduction to the engineering design process
Who it is for
An introductory simulation that assumes no prior knowledge of the subject, designed for undergraduate courses. It also works in vocational and high-school programmes and in onboarding sessions.
How a session runs
- The instructor creates a session from the Eureka dashboard and invites the participants.
- Participants play 4 rounds. In each one they submit their decisions and the simulation calculates the results. The first round opens with: 13 September 2027: define the problem.
- The simulation can be run in English, Español.
- The instructor follows each participant's progress and results from the dashboard, and uses the class results for the debrief.