Engineering
Teardown Night
Take one broken device apart with an adult, lay every piece out in the order it came out, and work out what job each part was doing.
Medium · 1-2 hours
Introduction
Most people throw a broken thing away without ever finding out what was inside it. That is a whole engineering lesson going into the trash.
Tonight you open one up. You will not fix it, and you do not need to. The job is to get every piece out, keep them in order, and work out what each one was for.
The Why
Building something teaches you how one design works. Taking things apart teaches you how a hundred designs work, because every product you open was somebody's answer to a problem and you get to read the answer directly. Laying the pieces out in the order they came out is what makes reassembly possible, and what turns a pile of parts into a map of how the thing was put together.
Step-by-Step Instructions
- 1
With an adult, pick the device and check that it is safe to open: unplugged for at least a day, batteries out, and nothing with a screen or a large capacitor inside.
- 2
Photograph the outside from every side before you touch a single screw. That is your record of what it looked like whole.
- 3
Find every screw, including the ones hiding under rubber feet and stickers. Put each screw into its own bowl or ice cube tray cup, in the order you removed it.
- 4
Open the case slowly. If it will not come apart, there is a screw or a clip you have not found yet. Force is almost never the answer.
- 5
Take out one part at a time and lay it on the towel left to right, in the exact order it came out. Photograph the row every few parts.
- 6
For each part, write one sentence: what it is, and what job it was doing. If you cannot tell, write your best guess and put a question mark next to it.
- 7
Find the part that failed, if you can. Look for burn marks, snapped plastic, a loose wire, or a worn gear. Then decide: could this have been designed so it did not break?
Parts Inventory
One row per part, in the order it came out. Fill in the last column even when you are guessing, and mark the guesses with a question mark.
| # | Part name | What it is made of | Job it was doing |
|---|---|---|---|
| Row 1, # | Row 1, Part name | Row 1, What it is made of | Row 1, Job it was doing |
| Row 2, # | Row 2, Part name | Row 2, What it is made of | Row 2, Job it was doing |
| Row 3, # | Row 3, Part name | Row 3, What it is made of | Row 3, Job it was doing |
| Row 4, # | Row 4, Part name | Row 4, What it is made of | Row 4, Job it was doing |
| Row 5, # | Row 5, Part name | Row 5, What it is made of | Row 5, Job it was doing |
| Row 6, # | Row 6, Part name | Row 6, What it is made of | Row 6, Job it was doing |
| Row 7, # | Row 7, Part name | Row 7, What it is made of | Row 7, Job it was doing |
| Row 8, # | Row 8, Part name | Row 8, What it is made of | Row 8, Job it was doing |
| Row 9, # | Row 9, Part name | Row 9, What it is made of | Row 9, Job it was doing |
| Row 10, # | Row 10, Part name | Row 10, What it is made of | Row 10, Job it was doing |
If you attempt to put it back together, run the sheet bottom to top: the last part out is the first part back in.