STIIX Water System Project: Engineering Sustainable Water Infrastructure
In the STIIX Water System Project, students step into the role of city engineers in STIIX-Ville, tasked with supplying clean water to a rapidly growing community. Their mission: design a gravity-fed water distribution system that lifts water to a central tower and distributes it to multiple homes using principles of fluid dynamics, pressure, and system design.
Over 2–3 hours of guided work, learners engage with a complete engineering design cycle via STIIX’s five-part video curriculum: Introduction, Academic Concepts, How-To Build, Testing & Evaluation, and a Career Spotlight. In the build phase, teams sketch system layouts, prototype piping or straw-based pipelines, and assemble components to simulate real-world water flow. The design process emphasizes critical trade-offs: balancing elevation, pressure, pipe length, and infrastructure cost to ensure equitable water distribution.
During testing, students measure flow rate, pressure, and water delivery efficiency to different “homes” in their model system. They iterate and refine their designs to optimize performance while considering sustainability and resilience. Through this process, they learn how gravity, pressure, and fluid resistance govern water systems.
Educators receive a full support package—detailed lesson plans, student build logs, evaluation guides, and reflection prompts aligned to NGSS engineering and environmental science standards.
Bring structure and excitement to hands-on learning with STIIX-Ville — your digital hub for project guides, assessments, and student progress tracking.
What’s Included in the Box:
- STIIX structural sticks & connectors
- Model “water tower” or elevated reservoir pieces
- Tubing or straw-style pipeline components
- Valves or connectors for branching flow
- Collection “homes” / distribution nodes
- Water input container or syringe to simulate water supply
- Build-log & design sketch worksheets
- Testing & evaluation guide (measuring flow, pressure, network performance)
- Reflection & iteration prompts
- Teacher slide deck & lesson plan
- Instructional video series (5 modules)
