EYE LEGO Engineering Design Challenges: Water Filtration Systems

Challenge: Begin by polling LEGO Club members to see how many of them are able to drink water directly from their sinks. Then explain that globally, clean water is not so easily accessible. Ask students to design a water filtration system that cleans out all of the germs and unsafe chemicals from dirty water to make it drinkable!

Engineering Goals:

• Define the problem that not everyone has access to clean water
• Identify ways to make dirty water safe to drink such as:
  • Particle filtration 
  • UV Ray Sanitation 
  • Chemical manipulation 
• Discuss Existing solutions such as Lifestraw, and the water purifying bike Cycloclean
• Brainstorm and prototype LEGO filtration solutions to provide peopel with clean water

Leader Instructions/Tips:

• Using the links above, show students existing technologies to help them generate their own ideas
• To bring the challenge to the next level, bring in recycled materials and let students combined recyclables with LEGOs to build and test their filter. 
  • o create your own "dirty" water, add dirt, glitter, small sticks, and leaves that students can try to filter out