Hi, I'm NM and this year I am in a class called Design and Engineering. This unit was about levers, trigonometry, physics, empathy, and the design process! For our action project in this unit, we were asked to redesign a gardening tool to be effective and usable for senior citizens. Since our audience is senior citizens they are not as physically able as most people, which means we had to think about the things that they specifically couldn't do very easily and change our designs based on that. This is why we talked a lot about empathy, (actually understanding what someone else is going through and helping them), because you really need to step into someone else's shoes to be able to design the best possible product that would work for them. When researching to form empathy we read articles about other people's struggles with tools, about aging and joints, and we even interviewed a gardener. We even went on a Field experience to Home Depot to look at different gardening tools.
When I interviewed a gardener, she mentioned that one of the most difficult things about gardening is how much she has to bend down. This made me want to make tools that are able to reach the ground without the gardener needing to bend down to use them. It turns out that her least favorite tool is the garden rake, because of a few reasons. One is because it is heavy, and another is because if you step on the points it would not only hurt but it could also flip up like a lever and bang you in the head. So I learned about some things that could make a gardening tool quite dangerous. When I asked her about her favorite gardening tool she talked about the “long handle bulb planter”, which is basically like a cookie cutter but with soil for planting bulbs. This tool works well because it has a long handle so she doesn’t need to bend down, and it makes the perfect shape in the soil to plant a bulb.
So this is the final tool that we came up with! There are three main changes that we made to make this shovel better for senior citizens than most. One change we made was we made the shovel’s (grey) shaft retractable, so when a gardener needs a shorter shovel they can change it, or when they need a longer shovel they can change it. This way they don't need to buy multiple shovels just to have different sizes, they can just adjust the size using the purple button. Something else we added was detachable (green) blades. When changing the length of the shovel you will most likely need to change the blade size as well, so we came up with having a (green) button that will loosen the blade in order to switch them out. The last big change we made to the shovel is we made the top (purple) handle big enough to fit two hands in. We also decided to add a comfy rubber grip to the handle so that it could be the most comfortable for the gardener.
When I interviewed a gardener, she mentioned that one of the most difficult things about gardening is how much she has to bend down. This made me want to make tools that are able to reach the ground without the gardener needing to bend down to use them. It turns out that her least favorite tool is the garden rake, because of a few reasons. One is because it is heavy, and another is because if you step on the points it would not only hurt but it could also flip up like a lever and bang you in the head. So I learned about some things that could make a gardening tool quite dangerous. When I asked her about her favorite gardening tool she talked about the “long handle bulb planter”, which is basically like a cookie cutter but with soil for planting bulbs. This tool works well because it has a long handle so she doesn’t need to bend down, and it makes the perfect shape in the soil to plant a bulb.
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| NM "Bulb Planter" 2022 |
I learned a few things from researching already existing shovels at our Field Experience to Home Depot. The first shovel I looked at I tested to see if I stepped on the end it would shoot up, but it didn’t! When I looked at it closer I noticed that it is designed so there is a curve that stops it from flipping up. Something else that my partner and I noticed was that there are many different types of shovels with different lengths and blade sizes. We also noticed that none of these shovels had a handle big enough to comfortably fit two hands. My partner and I thought that being able to comfortably use both hands when pushing down on a shovel could be very helpful.
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| NM "Razorback" 2022 |
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| NM "Anvil" 2022 |
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| NM "Gardening rake" 2022 |
So this is the final tool that we came up with! There are three main changes that we made to make this shovel better for senior citizens than most. One change we made was we made the shovel’s (grey) shaft retractable, so when a gardener needs a shorter shovel they can change it, or when they need a longer shovel they can change it. This way they don't need to buy multiple shovels just to have different sizes, they can just adjust the size using the purple button. Something else we added was detachable (green) blades. When changing the length of the shovel you will most likely need to change the blade size as well, so we came up with having a (green) button that will loosen the blade in order to switch them out. The last big change we made to the shovel is we made the top (purple) handle big enough to fit two hands in. We also decided to add a comfy rubber grip to the handle so that it could be the most comfortable for the gardener.
Something my partner and I noticed about all the shovels we looked at was how none of them had a handle big enough to comfortably fit two hands, and trying them out wasn’t very comfortable. My partner and I thought that being able to comfortably use both hands when pushing down on a shovel could be very helpful. So we decided to make the top handle big enough to fit two hands in. We also decided to add a comfy rubber grip to the handle so that it could be the most comfortable for the gardener since none of the other shovels had a very comfortable grip. Another thing we did was we made the shovel’s shaft retractable, so when a gardener needs a shorter shovel they can change it, or when they need a longer shovel they can change it. Something else we added was detachable blades. These are all things we hadn’t seen in any of the other shovels.
Our shovel uses a wedge and a lever. Since our tool is a shovel it can be used as a class 1 lever, with the fulcrum in the middle, or a class 3 lever, where the input or effort is in the middle. You can either use the shovel with your hand in the middle of the shaft acting as the fulcrum, or you could hold the top handle of the shovel and use that part as the fulcrum.
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| NM "Shovel Storyboard" 2022 |
Our shovel uses a wedge and a lever. Since our tool is a shovel it can be used as a class 1 lever, with the fulcrum in the middle, or a class 3 lever, where the input or effort is in the middle. You can either use the shovel with your hand in the middle of the shaft acting as the fulcrum, or you could hold the top handle of the shovel and use that part as the fulcrum.
Volume equation of a cylinder: V=pi*r^2* h
Surface Area of a cylinder: SA=2*pi*r*h+2*pi*r^2
(measuring the largest cylinder)
H= 10in
R=2.5in
pi=3.141592
V=pi*2.5^2*10
V=pi*6.25*10
V=pi*62.5
V=196.3495in^3
SA=2*pi*2.5*10+2*pi*2.5^2
SA=2*pi*25+2*pi*6.25
SA=6.283184*25+6.283184*6.25
SA=157.0796+39.2699
SA=196.3495in^2
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| NM "Lever sketch" 2022 |
This Action Project was especially fun to do because it required a lot of sketching and imagination. I had lots of fun researching, brainstorming, and sketching for this project. The research may have been a bit annoying for me since I wanted to go right to brainstorming, but it was still fun and insightful. I am pleased with how our shovel turned out; this process was fun overall. Thank you for reading and visiting my blog! If you would like to check out my partner's blog too, here it is!
Citations:
Effects of aging - orthoinfo - aaos. OrthoInfo. (n.d.). Retrieved October 7, 2022, from https://orthoinfo.aaos.org/en/staying-healthy/effects-of-aging
The Home Depot. (n.d.). Retrieved October 7, 2022, from https://www.homedepot.com/
Simple tips to protect your joints. Harvard Health. (2014, August 21). Retrieved October 7, 2022, from https://www.health.harvard.edu/pain/simple-tips-to-protect-your-joints
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