Activity 1.1.4 Digging With Deere Essays - Equipment,

Activity 1.1.4 Digging With Deere Purpose The number of people in production agriculture has decreased significantly over the past 250 years. This has happened due to new advances in science and technology. Many of those scientific advances have been in the area of agricultural mechanics. Agriculture has kept up with growing demands of its products by people using the engineering design process to construct machines and structures that are more productive. Designing and constructing new machines using the engineering design process provides thousands of career opportunities. People use the engineering design process to research, design, build, and test new machines, structures, and processes to increase agricultural production. The first step in the process is identifying the problem. Then engineers set requirements for solving the problem so they know when the problem is solved. Next, they build a prototype to test and compare to the requirements. If the prototype meets the requirements, they have solved the problem. This process is continual as people who use the machine identify new problems that demand new solutions. John Deere capitalized on many of the steps necessary to design, modify, and adapt his machine to the ever-changing demands in agriculture. Follow along the path of John Deere to see how he identified a problem and used the engineering process to solve it. Materials Per student: Pencil Agriscience Notebook Procedure Read the following biography on John Deere, an entrepreneur in agricultural mechanics. After reading the biography of John Deere, use Table 1 on Activity 1.1.4 Student Worksheet to record evidence of how John Deere used the engineering design process to design a more efficient plow. In 1836, facing depressed business conditions in Vermont and with a young family to care for, John Deere traveled to Grand Detour, Illinois, to make a fresh start. Resourceful and hardworking, his skills as a blacksmith were immediately in demand. The farmers on the prairie struggled to turn heavy clay soil with cast iron plows designed for light, sandy soil of New England. The days in the field were difficult because they had to interrupt their work to clean the sticky prairie soil off their cast-iron plows. John Deere was convinced a plow that was highly polished and properly shaped could clean itself as it cut furrows. One day, a broken steel sawmill blade gave him an idea. Deere made a moldboard out of the broken blade using his blacksmith skills. The moldboard is the curved metal blade that digs, cuts, and turns over the soil. While the original plow could only do a fraction of the work farmers can tackle with modern tillage equipment, it was high-tech at the time. John Deere shaped his plow blade differently than others. Deere put a great deal of thought into the shape and curve of his moldboard. Its contours would determine how well the plow turned over the soil. Production increased slowly at first, but Deere kept busy. He did a lot of work away from his forge. He tested his products and changed his designs based on suggestions from customers. By 1849, he was producing 2000 plows a year. Deere did not change the basic design until 1875 when he introduced the company's first riding plow. There were other riding plows on the market, but Deere's two-wheeled sulky soon became one of the most popular. Deere introduced the company's first three-wheeled plow in the mid 1880's. By the early 1890s, Deere was offering walking and riding plows in single-bottom to six-bottom gang versions. Since it took four or six horses to pull the two-bottom version, the six-bottom plow would need power that was available only with a steam tractor. Now, 175 years later, the company that grew out of the success of this innovative plow continues to manufacture advanced equipment to help those who work with the land to accomplish their tasks more efficiently and faster. Adapted from: Deere Company. (2015) John Deere's plow. Retrieved from http://www.deere.com/en_US/corporate/our_company/about_us/history/john_deere_plow/john_deere_plow.page? Conclusion How did John Deere use the engineering design process to improve his product? Why did John Deere need to change the design of his plow continually? What impact did John Deere's plow have on agricultural production? What other machines in agriculture have improved production? How could John Deere measure the efficiency of one of his prototypes to determine it was an improved product? Activity 1.1.4 Student Worksheet