Pipe Pioneers 7-11
Journey underground with Pipe Pioneers, where civil engineering meets robotics. From pipeline-inspecting bots to machines that keep our water and gas flowing, learners take on the role of engineers, designing and prototyping robots built to tackle the extreme conditions hidden beneath our feet.
How can we delve deeper to identify problems?
Learners become problem detectives, looking closely at issues they’ve spotted in and around their school. Instead of jumping straight to solutions, they ask smart, targeted questions to uncover what’s really going on, using activities like think–pair–share to develop their ideas. Great engineers start with great questions.
How do engineers turn real emergencies into real solutions?
Learners are faced with an emergency scenario - a pipe buried deep under a hospital is leaking toxic sewage, so they need to work through the Imagine phase of the Engineering Design Cycle. They create a detailed design specification and annotated sketches, developing innovative solutions for this dirty, difficult and dangerous, underground challenge.
What does it take to build a robot that protects people, places, and the planet?
Learners continue to explore how robots are innovating solutions for the civil engineering sector. They progress to building prototypes, select appropriate materials, before testing and evaluating their prototypes. As real engineers do, they learn to fail forward—testing, observing, and refining their prototypes and developing key Engineering Habits of Mind.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provide a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. These sessions support Goals 9 and 15, which aim to build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation; to protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.
