Summary
Makes the case that failure is not the opposite of success in engineering — it is how engineers learn. Each failed prototype reveals information that leads to a better design, making failure a necessary tool.
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Teaching resources
Discussion questions
Discussion
- How is failing in engineering different from failing a test in school?
- What specific information does a failed prototype give an engineer?
- Can you think of a famous invention that required many failures before it worked?
- Why is it important to document failures, not just successes, in science and engineering?
Quick work-a-long
Vocabulary: prototype, failure, iteration, information, improve, document.
Try it: Build the tallest tower you can from ten index cards in three minutes. Note every collapse. After, write: what did each collapse tell you? How did your design change because of what you learned from failures?