ENGINEERING
- Select some manufactured item in your home (such as a toy or an
appliance) and, under adult supervision and with the approval of your
counselor, investigate how and why it works as it does. Find out what sort
of engineering activities were needed to create it. Discuss with your
counselor what you learned and how you got the information.
- Select an engineering achievement that has had a major impact on
society. Use the resources available to you to research it. Tell your
counselor about the engineer (s) who made it possible, the special obstacles
they had to overcome, and how this achievement has influenced the world
today.
- Explain the work of six types of engineers. Pick two of the six and
explain how their work is related.
- Visit with an engineer (who may be your counselor or parent) and do the
following:
- Discuss the work this engineer does and the tools the engineer
uses.
- Discuss with the engineer a current project and the engineer’s
particular role in it.
- Find out how the engineer’s work is done and how results are
achieved.
- Ask to see the reports that the engineer writes concerning the
project.
- Discuss with your counselor what you learned about engineering from
this visit.
- Do ONE of the following:
- Use the engineering-systems approach to make step by step plans for
your next campout. List alternative ideas on such items as program
schedule, campsites, transportation, and costs. Tell why you made the
choices you did and what improvements were made.
- Make an original design for a piece of patrol equipment. Use the
engineering-systems approach to help you decide how it should work and
look. Draw plans for it. Show the plans to your counselor, explain why
you designed it the way you did, and explain how you would make it.
- Do TWO of the following:
- Transforming Motion. Using common material or a construction set,
make a simple model that will demonstrate transforming motion. How does
this make use of basic mechanical concepts like levers and inclined
planes? Describe an example where this mechanism is used in a real
product.
- Using Electricity. Make a list of 10 electrical appliances in your
home. Find out approximately how much electricity each uses in one
month. Learn how to find out the amount and cost of electricity used in
your home during periods of light and heavy use. Tell five ways to
conserve electricity.
- Using materials. Do experiments to show the differences in strength
and heat conductivity in wood, plastic, and metal. Discuss with your
counselor what you have learned.
- Converting Energy. Do an experiment to show how mechanical, heat,
chemical, solar, and/or electrical energy may be converted from one or
more types of energy to another. Explain your results. Describe to your
counselor what energy is and how energy is converted and used in your
surroundings.
- Moving people. Find out the different ways people in your community
get to work. Make a study of traffic flow (number of vehicles and
relative speed) in both heavy and light traffic periods. Discuss with
your counselor what might be improved to make it easier for people in
your community to get where they need to go.
- Science Fair. Build an engineering project for a science or
engineering fair or similar competition, and enter it. (This requirement
may be met by participation on an engineering competition project team.)
Discuss with your counselor what your project demonstrates and what kind
of questions visitors to the fair asked you about it. How well were you
able to answer their questions?
- Find out what high school courses you need to take to be admitted to an
engineering college. Find out what other subjects would be helpful in
preparing for an engineering career.
- Explain what it means for an engineer to be a registered Professional
Engineer (P.E.). In what types of engineering work is registration most
important?
- Study the Engineer’s Code of Ethics. Explain how this is like the
Scout Oath and Scout Law.
BSA Advancement ID#: 46
Source: Boy Scout Requirements, #33215E, revised 2002
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