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THEN AND NOW: Using virtual
factory tours to spark curiosity about science
and math, and technical careers.
Merlyn Severn/Picture Post/Getty
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somewhere indside everyone’s
mind, there is a haunting question: what causes the
faint seam on the side of a glass bottle?
Well, maybe not. But there must be people intrigued
about the power train in their new Harley-Davidson.
Or golf fanatics who would love to hear about the role
of wax in their titanium club heads. Or chocoholics
who might never guess where their favorite sweet comes
from.
Those who are curious can visit a new website, “How
Everyday Things Are Made,” that offers behind-the-scenes
glimpses into the manufacturing world. Some 50 videos
show what goes into the making of products as diverse
as airplanes, jelly beans and wool sweaters. (The bottle
seam is formed by the slight gap between the two halves
of the mold that shapes hot glass.)
Started 1 1⁄2 years ago, the site is a joint effort
of Stanford’s Alliance for Innovative Manufacturing
and Design4X, a company specializing in online engineering
education. AIM groups industry professionals with engineering
and business faculty and students in a “continuous
learning community” and information exchange.
The new site seeks to educate the public and spark interest
in technical careers.
The videos are meant to be educational, but they aren’t
dry textbooks-on-film. A lesson in aircraft construction
is accomplished through a Boeing-supplied video that
uses time-lapse photography to shrink the entire creation
of a 777 jet—from schematics to flight test—down
to five minutes of high-speed action. Viewers learn
that the 777 has 120,000 unique parts. They also see
contrasting footage from the early 1900s in which factory
workers, like quilters at a bee, nimbly stitch cloth
covers for wings, and craftsmen shape propellers by
hand. An ordinary chocolate bar becomes more exotic
when viewers get to see Latin American farmers using
machetes to lop football-sized cacao pods off branches,
then watch the cream-colored seeds turn chocolate brown
after days of fermentation.
“We wanted people to see manufacturing as the
amazing technology that it is, and then pass this along
to their friends,” says Mark Martin, PhD ’00,
president of Design4X. Using videos supplied by manufacturers,
Martin narrates and keeps things lively. Explaining
how yarn stays intact, he quips that at any given moment,
“your clothes are just a few twists away from
falling apart.”
Martin teaches in Stanford’s continuing studies
program and developed the idea for “How Everyday
Things Are Made” while teaching a course of the
same name for non-engineers. He treated his students
to plant tours and screened manufacturing videos lent
to him by companies. When he took his pursuit of informative
multimedia to the web, however, he hit a stumbling block.
“While there are a lot of pictures [on the web],”
he says, “there’s not a lot of information
in video format showing things being made.”
Martin began talking with Rick Reis, AIM’s executive
director, in mid-2002. The alliance’s member companies,
including Ford, General Motors, Intel and Cisco, quickly
jumped onboard; AIM provided $30,000 for the project.
“[We hoped] it would add to the luster of the
idea behind technical careers in engineering or math
or science,” Reis says. These days, manufacturing
looks in need of a shine. Of the 2.7 million jobs lost
in the economic downturn between March 2001 and August
2003, 90 percent were in manufacturing, according to
David Huether, chief economist for the National Association
of Manufacturers. Even so, employers are having trouble
finding the workers they need. The group’s 2003
report found that 80 percent of manufacturers face a
shortage of skilled labor.
Martin and Reis are optimistic that their site can attract
new and better brain- and muscle-power to the sector.
Response to the website is encouraging. Fueled only
by an initial press release and word of mouth, the blog
community provided free publicity for the site, which
soon was receiving 5,000 to 10,000 hits a day. So far,
visits total more than 486,000.
They’re not all just passersby wondering what
molten glass looks like. Lourdes Rosario, an engineering
professor at the University of Puerto Rico, uses the
videos in her courses. “The students can see different
processes and this helps them to understand the basic
principles,” she commented by e-mail. “They
are more interested about the course topics after seeing
the complexity involved when designing a process to
make a product.”
Martin and Reis have submitted a grant proposal to the
National Science Foundation in hopes of making the site
an even more effective resource for junior high and
high school teachers.
“The goal is that teachers incorporate this into
their science and math classes,” Martin said.
“You’re not going to take a lot of time
to teach manufacturing, but maybe you can teach physics
using manufacturing videos. Maybe you can teach environmental
issues using manufacturing videos.”
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If instead of reciting the Third Law of Thermodynamics,
high school students get to “watch hot gobs of
glass flying through the air,” as Martin puts
it, perhaps they’ll learn some physics, too. |
