Technologic process

What is technology for?

Technology makes our lives easier. It helps us when we eat or drink, when we wash, when we have fun in our spare time. But technology doesn’t just deal with new sophisticated inventions. A table, a bed, a ball pen…, all of them are created by technology.

Any object we use every day needs a process of creation that implies knowledge in very varied areas.

Drawing the ideas

When we have an idea and we want to create the real object, we have to draw it on a paper; we need to know how to draw.

Choosing the material

If we have already decided the aspect, the size, the functioning of our object, we have to choose the most suitable materials to make it. So we need to know the materials that we are going to work with.

Knowing the properties of materials

If we want to know how a material is, we need to know its properties:

•Can it be broken easily?•Is it flexible?•Can we bend it?•Can we stretch it?•Is it easy to cut?•Does it resist the hits?

Making tests

That’s why technologists make tests on materials. We will try to make some easy tests.

Working the wood

The main material that we are going to work with is wood. We will learn wood works and we need to know how to use some tools.

Analyzing structures

Any object we want to make needs a structure.

There are structures everywhere: bridges, houses, tunnels… Let’s learn how structures are, how they support loads and how they must be built to resist different efforts, such as:

• tension• compression• bending• torsion• shear

Electricity

We obtain the power we need from movement or machines that we have built. This year, we will learn about electricity.

We will use symbols, schemes and measurement units, from simple ideas to more complex ones.

Using computers

The most useful electrical machine is the computer.

We aren’t going to build any computer, but we are going to use it for:

Writing Searching for information

Drawing Communicating

Telling stories and so many things…

The technologic processTechnology helps us to solve the problems and the needs we have. We follow the same steps in every problem. Like this

1. Identify the problem or the need2. Explore ideas and design solutions3. Build the object4. Test if it works