TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Space Travel
Students are introduced to the historical motivation for space exploration. They learn about the International Space Station as an example of space travel innovation and are introduced to new and futuristic ideas that space engineers are...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Life on the Moon
Students learn about the physical properties of the Moon. They compare these to the properties of the Earth to determine how life would be different for people living on the Moon. Using their understanding of these differences, they...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Asteroids
Students learn some basic facts about asteroids in our solar system, mainly about the size of asteroids and how that relates to the potential danger of an asteroid colliding with the Earth. Students are briefly introduced to the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Our Amazing, Powerful Sun
Middle schoolers are introduced to the Sun by exploring various aspects of it, including its composition, interior workings, and relationship to the Earth.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Abdominal Cavity and Laparoscopic Surgery
For students interested in studying biomechanical engineering, especially in the field of surgery, this lesson serves as an anatomy and physiology primer of the abdominopelvic cavity. Students are introduced to the abdominopelvic...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Mechanics of Elastic Solids
After conducting the associated activity, young scholars are introduced to the material behavior of elastic solids. Engineering stress and strain are defined and their importance in designing devices and systems is explained. How...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Viscous Fluids
Students are introduced to the similarities and differences in the behaviors of elastic solids and viscous fluids. Several types of fluid behaviors are described--Bingham plastic, Newtonian, shear thinning and shear thickening--along...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Viscoelasticity
Students are introduced to the concept of viscoelasticity and some of the material behaviors of viscoelastic materials, including strain rate dependence, stress relaxation, creep, hysteresis and preconditioning. Viscoelastic material...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Tissue Mechanics
Students reflect on their experiences making silly putty (the previous hands-on activity in the unit), especially why changing the borax concentration alters the mechanical properties of silly putty and how this pertains to tissue...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Triangles & Trusses
Students learn about the fundamental strength of different shapes, illustrating why structural engineers continue to use the triangle as the structural shape of choice. Examples from everyday life are introduced to show how this shape is...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Test and Treat Before You Drink
Students learn about water quality testing and basic water treatment processes and technology options. Biological, physical and chemical treatment processes are addressed, as well as physical and biological water quality testing,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Watershed Balance
This lesson teaches the concept of a watershed and why it is important in the context of engineering hydrology. Learners learn about runoff and how we visualize runoff in the form of hydrographs.
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Teach Engineering: Hurricanes
Students learn what causes hurricanes and what engineers do to help protect people from destruction caused by hurricane winds and rain. Research and data collection vessels allow for scientists and engineers to model and predict weather...
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Teach Engineering: Global Climate Change
Learners learn how the greenhouse effect is related to global warming and how global warming impacts our planet, including global climate change. Extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and how we react to these changes are the main...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Kind of Footprint? Carbon Footprint
Young scholars determine their carbon footprints by answering questions about their everyday lifestyle choices. Then they engineer plans to reduce them. Students learn about their personal impacts on global climate change and how they...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Boxed in and Wrapped Up
Students find the volume and surface area of a rectangular box (e.g., a cereal box), and then figure out how to convert that box into a new, cubical box having the same volume as the original. As they construct the new, cube-shaped box...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Caught in the Net
Bycatch can be defined as the act of unintentionally catching certain living creatures using fishing gear. A bycatched species is distinguished from a target species (the animal the gear is intended to catch) because it is not sold or...
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Teach Engineering: Sound for Sight
Echolocation is the ability to orient by transmitting sound and receiving echoes from objects in the environment. As a result of a Marco-Polo type activity and subsequent lesson, students learn basic concepts of echolocation. They use...
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Teach Engineering: What Do Bread and Beer Have in Common?
Learners are presented with information that will allow them to recognize that yeasts are unicellular organisms that are useful to humans. In fact, their usefulness is derived from the contrast between the way yeast cells and human cells...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Move It!
Mechanical energy is the most easily understood form of energy for learners. When there is mechanical energy involved, something moves. Mechanical energy is a very important concept to understand. Engineers need to know what happens when...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Dirty Decomposers
Students design and conduct experiments to determine what environmental factors favor decomposition by soil microbes. They use chunks of carrots for the materials to be decomposed, and their experiments are carried out in plastic bags...
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Teach Engineering: Floaters and Sinkers
This lesson introduces young scholars to the important concept of density. The focus is on the more easily understood densities of solids, but students can also explore the densities of liquids and gases. Young scholars devise methods to...
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Teach Engineering: How Many Drops?
In this lesson and its associated activity, students conduct a simple test to determine how many drops of each of three liquids can be placed on a penny before spilling over. The three liquids are water, rubbing alcohol, and vegetable...
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Teach Engineering: Electrifying the World
This instructional activity introduces students to the fundamental concepts of electricity. This is accomplished by addressing questions such as "How is electricity generated," and "How is it used in every-day life?" The instructional...