Overview
"This New House" is an integrated math-chemistry project spanning eight weeks. During that period, most class time (daily two-hour blocks) is spent working towards the project's goal: designing a house using principles of sustainable architecture. The essential questions are: "How does human habitation affect the environment?" and "How can a home be designed to have minimal impact on the environment?" These are addressed through a study of sustainable architecture.
In this project students learn the key stages of the design process. They work in pairs to design a home for a four-person family given design constraints such as maximum square footage and a quarter-acre plot of land. The major components of the project are a scale site plan, scale floor plan(s), scale exterior elevations, a scale architectural model of the home, and a brochure/pamphlet explaining the design of the home.
The design work must begin early, since frequent revision is essential to the project. The classroom quickly becomes a studio where formal and informal student critiques are held and where improvements are made through research and continuing examination of the design goals. All drawings begin as sketches that evolve into small-scale pencil drawings on graph paper. Upon completing these sketches, students begin drawing blueprints, then proceed to model building.
Products
Students will produce each of the following:
- Architectural Drawings
- Blueprint of site plan
- Blueprint of floor plan(s)
- Blueprint of exterior elevations
- Scale architectural model of design
- Brochure/pamphlet explaining design
Learning Goals
Students will understand:
- How over-development affects the local environment
- How one can heat and cool a home using passive solar design in any climate
- How the angle of the sun at different hours, seasons, and latitudes affects the temperature of the home
- How the specific heat of a material affects the temperature of a home
- How thermal mass can be used to control the inside temperature
- How changing the dimensions of a space affects the area, surface area, and volume
- How the area of window glazing on various walls affects the temperature of a home
Students will be able to:
- Design a home that has minimal impact on the environment and can be built to last using sustainable materials and smart design
- Build a scale model of a real building
- Implement multiple features in an overall design and evaluate trade offs
Content: Topics Addressed
Throughout the project, students learn about:
- Photovoltaics (PVs) as an Energy Source
- History of PVs
- Home energy use
- Basic design & function
- Passive Solar Design
- Fourteen basic principles of design
- Roof overhang calculations
- Exterior window glazing
- Thermal mass
- Mathematics
- Area of polygons and asymmetrical shapes
- Surface area of spheres, prisms and other 3D objects
- Calculating Volume of spheres, prisms, and other 3D objects
- Scaling factors & scale drawings
- Balancing a budget
- Using Excel for spreadsheets & calculations
- Special right triangles
- Sine, cosine, tangent, cosecant, secant, and cotangent calculations
- Architecture
- Drawings: site plans, floor plans, exterior elevations
- Symbols for drawings
- Process of model-building
Standards Addressed in This New House Project
California Content Standards, Geometry:
5.0 - ... use the concept of corresponding parts of congruent triangles
7.0 - ...use theorems involving...the properties of quadrilaterals and the properties of circles.
8.0 - Students know, derive, and solve problems involving the perimeter, circumference, area, volume, lateral area, and surface area of common geometric figures.
9.0 - Students compute the volumes and surface areas of prisms, pyramids, cylinders, cones, and spheres; and students commit to memory the formulas for prisms, pyramids, and cylinders.
10.0 - Students compute areas of polygons, including rectangles, scalene triangles, equilateral triangles, rhombi, parallelograms, and trapezoids.
11.0 - Students determine how changes in dimensions affect the perimeter, area, and volume of common geometric figures and solids.
15.0 - Students use the Pythagorean Theorem to determine distance and find missing lengths of sides of right triangles.
18.0 - Students know the definitions of the basic trigonometric functions defined by the angles of a right triangle. They also know and are able to use elementary relationships between them.
19.0 - Students use trigonometric functions to solve for an unknown length of a side of a right triangle, given and angle and a length of side.
20.0 - Students know and are able to use angle and side relationships in problems with special right triangles such as 30-60-90 and 45-45-90 triangles
California Content Standards, Chemistry:
3.a. Students know how to describe chemical reactions by writing balanced equations.
3.b. Students know the quantity of one mole is set by defining one mole of carbon 12 atoms to have a mass of exactly 12 grams
3.c. Students know one mole equals 6.02x10^23 particles (atoms or molecules).
3.d. Students know how to determine the molar mass of a molecule from its chemical formula and a table of atomic masses and how to convert the mass of a molecular substance to moles, number of particles, or volume of gas at standard temperature and pressure.
4.b. Students know the random motion of molecules explains the diffusion of gases.
4.c. Students know how to apply the gas laws to relations between the pressure, temperature, and volume of any amount of an ideal gas or any mixture of ideal gases.
4.e. Students know how to convert between the Celsius and Kelvin temperature scales.
4.f. Students know there is no temperature lower than 0 Kelvin.
4.g. Students know the kinetic theory of gases relates the absolute temperature of a gas to the average kinetic energy of its molecules or atoms.
4.h. Students know how to solve problems by using the ideal gas law in the form PV=nRT
4.i. Students know how to apply Dalton's law of partial pressures to describe the composition of gases.
7.a. Students know how to describe temperature and heat flow in terms of the motion of molecules (or atoms).
7.b. Students know chemical processes can either release (exothermic) or absorb (endothermic) thermal energy.
7.c. Students know energy is released when a material condenses or freezes and is absorbed when a material evaporates or melts.
Materials/Texts/Resources
Materials are critical to this project. It is best to have a class supply so that all work can be done in the classroom and all students have access to the same quality materials. The investment is worth it! As they begin drawing blueprints and building models, students will be constantly using the math they have learned.
- 8.5x11 graph paper
- 8.5x11 & 11x18 blank paper
- Drafting paper
- Tracing paper
- Paint Drafting tape
- Foam board (1/4" & 3/8")
- Matte board
- Cutting mats
- Paint brush (bristle & sponge) Exacto knives
- Glue (Elmer's or Tacky)
- Balsa wood strips
- Balsa wood sticks
- Paint tray
We found many helpful resources at a local bookstore in the architecture section. There are many books out there; here are some that proved quite useful:
- Chiras, Daniel. The Solar House: Passive Solar Heating and Cooling. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2002.
- Mostaedi, Arian. Sustainable Architecture, Low Tech Houses. Corte Madera, CA: Gingko Press, 2002.
- Palincsar, A. and A. Brown, Interactive Teaching to Promote Independent Learning from Text, Reading Teacher, 39-8, April 1986.
- Strong, Steven.The Solar Electric House. Still River, MA: Sustainability Press, 1993.
- Trulove, James. The Smart House. New York: Hearst International, 2002.
- Wiggins, Glenn. A Manual of Construction Documentation. New York: Watson-Guptill, 1989.
To design the roof overhang, students consulted the following website: http://www.susdesign.com/sunposition/index.html. They used the angle of the sun at different times of year to calculate the length of the roof overhang based on principles of passive solar design. Trigonometry was required for these calculations.