SPARK TANK CHALLENGE: CREATE AN INNOVATIVE SOUND SOLUTION FOR SATURN SCIENCE LAB-
Steve Farnsworth - Design teacher
Saturn Science Lab
With the beginning of the new year, we thought we would introduce the Dwight community to a new concept: The Spark Tank Challenge. Our first challenge is a competition of sorts to encourage our students to design an innovative soundproofing solution for our newly designed Saturn Science lab. There are a lot of wonderful features to this new classroom space, but one unforeseen consequence is that it can get rather noisy when in use by a class of students.
So far, a number of ninth graders have accepted the challenge and are now in the beginning stages of designing an original solution. They started the process by doing a creative idea generation activity.
Provocative Idea Creation, otherwise known as PO, is meant to encourage one to think outside of the box and generate more creative and original ideas.
Creative Challenge
As our society evolves, there are more electronics, machines, and just a greater population. Therefore, there is a greater problem of noise pollution- meaning that there is more unnecessary noise. I find it hard to focus when there is a lot of noise. So imagine if there was too much noise in a classroom! The Design teacher at my school has challenged students to find a solution for soundprooingf one of our classrooms, called Saturn. Saturn gets quite noisy when there are a lot of students or when there is construction, outside (since if is on the roof). Read his challenge and think of any ideas that you may have to solve the problem. This challenge will encourage you to think outside of the box.