Design & Engineering @ The Recyclery Collective

Juniors in the Design & Engineering class talked to experts at The Recyclery Collective in Rogers Park to learn about the mechanics of bikes and the purposes that different types of bikes serve. The Recyclery is an educational bike shop that promotes sustainability by giving access to tools, skills and opportunities for collaboration. In the second unit of this STEAM course, students have been pursuing the guiding question, how do wheels make the world spin?. In their pursuit of an answer, students have been studying the concepts of weight, speed, acceleration, velocity, and mass and their effects on simple machines such as the wheel, the axle, and the pulley.

Why?

The purpose of this Field Experience is to investigate the guiding question, how do bicycles impact lives?. The students talked to experts to investigate the evolution of bikes and how they are put together so that they can then design a bike that suits a person’s specific needs.

How?

The students talked to bike shop employees about the parts that make up a bike, their purpose, and the choices designers make when choosing to use certain parts over others.