Biomimicry - Natural Rocket Science

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The natural world is overflowing with sustainable solutions to the many challenges of survival: from staying cool to preventing the spread of disease, these are also problems that scientists and engineers struggle to solve every day. Biomimicry is innovation inspired by nature. The goal of this lesson is to teach students the value of studying nature to solve difficult engineering problems - introducing 3D printing as a transformative technology that unlocks the door to solutions previously prohibited by traditional manufacturing limitations. The lesson centers on researching and designing a novel aerodynamic profile for a rocket nose cone, based on drag-reducing forms found in nature. The design task is set up in OnShape, a free cloud-based parametric CAD application, with a template prepared that only requires students to draw a profile, and a completed 3D model of the nose cone will be automatically generated - making the task accessible even to students with no CAD experience. You can find the template here. Feel free to try it out yourself! The nose cone and tail fins are then ready to be attached to an air rocket constructed from off-the-shelf PVC piping, for launching and testing in a follow-up lesson. The template is set up to generate parts that fit onto a 40mm OD pipe, but due to the parametric nature of OnShape, it can easily be adapted to what you have on hand - just change the pipe cross section. The STL files included show three example nose cones and an example tail fin, with an example set based on the hydrodynamic forms of the Antarctic Minke whale. The printed parts shown were very kindly printed on a Form 2 in Tough without supports (nose cones) and Grey with supports (fins) by David at Formlabs Berlin. Thanks to Dave for his help! This lesson plan was submitted to the Create to Educate lesson plan contest with MatterHackers, sponsored by Ultimaker.