Outcome

QB Dummy

* This toy is based on the principles of gravity and projectile motion.

* The child will throw a football through the various hoops. The ball will then fall down and be funneled into a machine that throws the ball back to the child. The speed and angle of the machine returning the ball can be adjusted.

* The machine launching the football back to the child will be a JUGS-type machine, which are widely used in sports and durable. However, these machines sell commercially for a couple thousand dollars. The siding will be netting and the funnel and dummy will be hard plastic and/or hard rubber, which are durable and inexpensive. Safety concerns include electricity, moving parts, and flying balls.

* As a child throwing a football I learned how to get the ball where I want it to go. By thinking about sports toys now, I learned how angles and projectile motion are involved in throwing a football. I also thought of new ways to play with footballs and get better at the sport of football.

Travel Board

* This toy is based on the principles of numbers, strategy, and following a system of rules.

* The child will play card games or checkers or chess by velcroing the pieces to the cloth board. This toy is made for trips in a car, airplane, or other environment that is bumpy and may not have an ideal surface.

* This toy is fairly inexpensive; cloth and wood board, plastic pieces, playing cards, and velcro. The pieces will be durable plastic and the cloth covered wood board should be durable and space-efficient. This toy will be very safe. However, checker or chess pieces could serve as a choking hazard.

* As a child I would just get annoyed when I would try to play cards in the car and they would fly all over the place. My options for fun on a car or plane were very limited. Thinking about children's toys now helped me see how classical toys/games could be optimized for different situations/environments.

Shape Fit

*This toy is based on the principles of shapes and combining simple shapes to make more complex shapes.

* One child/player punches off triangles from the wall while the other player does not look. The other player then looks and tries to make the shape punched out of the wall using the playing pieces in a certain amount of time. The first player then turns the crank to move the wall past the playing pieces. The playing pieces must make the shape cut out of the wall and not hit the wall.

* This entire toy could be made of hard plastic which is inexpensive and durable. The crank and its moving parts could be made of metal making it turn smoother, however this would be more expensive and perhaps not as safe. Small parts could pose as a choking hazard and moving parts could cause injury.

*As a child I learned about simple and complex shapes, but not really how they fit together or their properties. By thinking about toys now, I realize how important it is to get children exposed to shapes and how they work. Shapes are important for engineering.