TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Surface Tension Basics
Students are presented with the question: "Why does a liquid jet break up into droplets?" and introduced to its importance in inkjet printers. A discussion of cohesive forces and surface tension is included, as well as surface acting...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Capillarity Measuring Surface Tension
Learners are presented with a short lesson on the difference between cohesive forces (the forces that hold water molecules together and create surface tension) and adhesive forces (the forces that causes water to "stick" to solid...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Wetting and Contact Angle
Students are presented with the concepts of wetting and contact angle. They are also introduced to the distinction between hydrophobic and hydrophilic surfaces. Students observe how different surfaces are used to maintain visibility...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Superhydrophobicity: The Lotus Effect
Students are introduced to superhydrophobic surfaces and the "lotus effect." Water spilled on a superhydrophobic surface does not wet the surface, but simply rolls off. Additionally, as water moves across the superhydrophobic surface, it...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Medical Instrumentation
Students will discuss the special considerations that must be made when dealing with the human body, and will gain an appreciation for the amazing devices that have improved our quality of life. They will also explore how 'Form Fits...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Can You Taste It?
Few people are aware of how crucial the sense of smell is to identifying foods, or the adaptive value of being able to identify a food as being familiar and therefore safe to eat. In this lesson plan and activity, students conduct an...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Skyscrapers: Engineering Up!
Skyscrapers are one of the most glorified products of Civil Engineering and contain an interesting history of progress and development. In this lesson, the students will learn about the history of the world's tallest free standing...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Viral Hijackers
Students learn how viruses invade host cells and hijack the hosts' cell-reproduction mechanisms in order to make new viruses, which can in turn attack additional host cells. Students also learn how the immune system responds to a viral...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Population Growth in Yeasts
This lesson is the second of two that explore cellular respiration and population growth in yeasts. In the first lesson, students set up a simple way to indirectly observe and quantify the amount of respiration occurring in...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Complex Networks and Graphs
Students learn about complex networks and how to represent them using graphs. They also learn that graph theory is a useful mathematical tool for studying complex networks in diverse applications of science and engineering, such as...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Processes on Complex Networks
Building on their understanding of graphs, young scholars are introduced to random processes on networks. They walk through an illustrative example to see how a random process can be used to represent the spread of an infectious disease,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Evolution of Digital Organisms
Young scholars are introduced to the concepts of digital organisms and digital evolution. They learn about the research that digital evolution software makes possible, and compare and contrast it with biological evolution.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Introduction to Evolutionary Computation
Students are introduced to the concepts of evolution by natural selection and digital evolution software. They learn about the field of evolutionary computation, which applies the principles of natural selection to solve engineering...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Biosensors for Food Safety
How can you tell if harmful bacteria are in your food or water that might make you sick? What you eat or drink can be contaminated with bacteria, viruses, parasites and toxins pathogens that can be harmful or even fatal. Students learn...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Heart of Our Cardiovascular System
Students learn about the heart and its role at the center of the human cardiovascular system. In the associated activity, students play out a scenario in which they are biomedical engineers asked to design artificial hearts. They learn...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Pharmaceutical Research Design Problem
Through this lesson and its associated activity, students explore the role of biomedical engineers working for pharmaceutical companies. First, students gain background knowledge about what biomedical engineers do, how to become a...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Fluid Power Basics
Students learn about the basic fundamental concepts regarding fluid power, which includes both pneumatic, which utilize gas, and hydraulic, which utilize liquid, systems. Both systems contain four basic components: a reservoir, a pump or...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is Heat?
Students learn about the definition of heat as a form of energy and how it exists in everyday life. They also learn about the three types of heat transfer as well as the connection between heat and insulation.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is Newton's First Law?
Students are introduced to the concepts of force, inertia, and Newton's first law of motion: objects at rest stay at rest and objects in motion stay in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.This lesson is the first in a series...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is Newton's Second Law?
After a review of force, types of forces, and Newton's first law, students are introduced to Newton's second law of motion: force = mass x acceleration.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is Newton's Third Law?
Students are introduced to Newton's third law of motion, and then learn that engineers apply Newton's third law and an understanding of reaction forces when designing a wide range of creations, from rockets and aircraft to door knobs,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Blood Clots, Polymers and Strokes
Students are introduced to the circulatory system with an emphasis on the blood clotting process, including coagulation and the formation and degradation of polymers through their underlying atomic properties. They learn about the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Far Does a Lava Flow Go?
While learning about volcanoes, magma and lava flows, students learn about the properties of liquid movement, coming to understand viscosity and other factors that increase and decrease liquid flow. They also learn about lava composition...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Are Gears? What Do They Do?
Students are introduced to an important engineering element- the gear. This prepares them to apply this knowledge in four associated activities in order to create successful solutions to design challenges that use LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT...