Designing and Prototyping Interactive Fluid Dynamics Exhibits for the Carnegie Science Center: An Undergraduate Team Project Experience

Abstract

This paper describes a team project experience at Carnegie Mellon University in which undergraduate students designed and prototyped interactive exhibits to teach principles of fluid dynamics. The client for the exhibits was the Carnegie Science Center (CSC) in Pittsburgh. The CSC promotes science awareness, focusing primarily on stimulating science appreciation in pre-teenagers through interactive exhibits that create an intuitive understanding of scientific principles. The students participating in this project first researched basic child development concepts, child motivation techniques, and the science museum?s practices. Then students conducted brainstorming sessions to identify fluid dynamics principles and to create a list of design criteria for the exhibits. Twelve exhibit ideas were selected and presented to the CSC from which six were chosen to further analyze, design and prototype.