Engineering students construct pantograph

Students in Mrs. DeCosta's Engineering Essentials class at Washingtonville High School have been studying machines and mechanical advantage. They were tasked with constructing a pantograph, a mechanism made up of levers that is designed to copy a traced image on a larger or smaller scale.

Students used the Engineering Design Process to design a pantograph based on a scale of their choosing, then tested and modified their pantographs until they obtained their desired results. They then calculated and compared the ideal and actual mechanical advantage of their machine before analyzing their data.