TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Get the Word Out at Mc Donalds!
Students take part in a hypothetical scenario that challenges them to inform customers at a local restaurant of how their use and disposal of plastics relates/contributes to the Great Pacific garbage patch (GPGP). What students...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Searching for Bigfoot and Others Like Him
Cryptids, creatures of questionable existence, are used as a source of data to guide students into the creation of their own GIS data layer in Google Earth. The activity serves the purpose of a tutorial to teach students how to make data...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Where Are the Plastics Near Me? (Field Trip)
An adult-led field trip allows students to be organized into investigation teams that catalogue the incidence of plastic debris in different environments. These plastics are being investigated according to their type, age, location and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Where Are the Plastics Near Me? (Mapping the Data)
In a student-led and fairly independent fashion, data collected in the associated field trip activity are organized by student groups to create useful and informative Google Earth maps. Each team creates a map, uses that map to analyze...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Inside the Dna
Students conduct their own research to discover and understand the methods designed by engineers and used by scientists to analyze or validate the molecular structure of DNA, proteins and enzymes, as well as basic information about gel...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Dna Forensics and Color Pigments
Students perform DNA forensics using food coloring to enhance their understanding of DNA fingerprinting, restriction enzymes, genotyping and DNA gel electrophoresis. They place small drops of different food coloring ("water-based paint")...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Would You Drink That?
This activity focuses on getting students to think about bacteria, water quality and water treatment processes. Students develop and test their hypotheses about the "cleanliness" of three water samples prepared by the teacher. Then they...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Should I Drink That?
Students perform the first steps that environmental engineers do to determine water quality - sampling and analysis. Student teams measure the electrical conductivity of four water samples using teacher-made LED conductivity testers and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Keep It Moving! From Electrons to Electric Motors
Students act as engineers to apply what they know about how circuits work in electrical/motorized devices to design their own battery-operated model motor vehicles with specific paramaters. They calculate the work done by the vehicles...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Cartesian Diver
Students observe Pascal's law, Archimedes' principle, and the ideal gas law as a Cartesian diver moves within a closed system.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Above Ground Storage Tank Design Project
In this culminating activity, student groups act as engineering design teams to come up with improved storage tank designs to make them less vulnerable to uplift, displacement and buckling in storm conditions.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Bone Crusher
Students use a tension-compression machine or an alternative bone-breaking setup to see how different bones fracture differently and with different amounts of force, depending on their body locations. Teams determine bone mass and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Bacteria Transformation
Students construct paper recombinant plasmids to simulate the methods genetic engineers use to create modified bacteria.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Basically Acidic Ink
Students hypothesize whether vinegar and ammonia-based glass cleaner are acids or bases. They create designs on index cards using these substances as invisible inks. After the index cards have dried, they apply red cabbage juice as an...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Magical Motion
Students watch video clips from the October Sky and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone movies to see examples of projectile motion. Then they explore the relationships between displacement, velocity and acceleration, and calculate...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Hurricane! Saving Lives With Reasoning & Computer Science
Students develop and apply the distance formula and an x-y coordinate plane on a hurricane tracking map, and then use a map scale to determine distance in miles. Then, using MATLAB computer science programming language, students help...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Insulation Materials Investigation
Students test the insulation properties of different materials by timing how long it takes ice cubes to melt in the presence of various insulating materials. Students learn about the role that thermal insulation materials can play in...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Make That Invisible! Refractive Index Matching
Students determine the refractive index of a liquid with a simple technique using a semi-circular hollow block. Then they predict the refractive index of a material (a Pyrex glass tube) by matching it with the known refractive index of a...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Works Best in a Radiator?
Students learn the importance of heat transfer and heat conductance. Using hot plates, student groups measure the temperature change of a liquid over a set time period and use the gathered data to calculate the heat transfer that occurs....
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Magic Magnetic Fluid
Students are introduced to a unique fluid--ferrofluids--the shape of which can be influenced by magnetic fields. This activity supplements traditional magnetism activities and offers comparisons between large-scale materials and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is a Nanometer?
Students are introduced to the nano-size length scale as they make measurements and calculate unit conversions. They measure common objects and convert their units to nanometers, giving them a simple reference frame for understanding the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Magnetic Fluids
In this fun, engaging activity, students are introduced to a unique type of fluid--ferrofluids--whose shape can be influenced by magnetic fields! Students act as materials engineers and create their own ferrofluids. They are challenged...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Quantum Dots and Colors
Students are introduced to the physical concept of the colors of rainbows as light energy in the form of waves with distinct wavelengths, but in a different manner than traditional kaleidoscopes. Looking at different quantum dot...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Thirsty for Gold
Student teams conduct an experiment that uses gold nanoparticles as sensors of chemical agents to determine which of four sports drinks has the most electrolytes. In this way, students are introduced to gold nanoparticles and their...