TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Close Enough?
Accuracy of measurement in navigation depends very much on the situation. If a sailor's target is an island 200 km wide, sailing off center by 10 or 20 km is not a major problem. But, if the island were only 1 km wide, it would be missed...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Computer Accuracy
Accuracy of measurement in navigation depends very much on the situation. If a sailor's target is an island 200 km wide, sailing off center by 10 or 20 km is not a major problem. But, if the island were only 1 km wide, it would be missed...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Classroom Triangles
In this activity, students will use bearing measurements to triangulate and determine objects' locations. Working in teams of two or three, students must put on their investigative hats as they take bearing measurements to specified...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Topo Triangulation
In this activity, students will learn how to read a topographical map and how to triangulate with just a map. True triangulation requires both a map and compass, but to simplify the activity and make it possible indoors, the compass...
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Teach Engineering: State Your Position
To navigate, you must know roughly where you stand relative to your designation, so you can head in the right direction. In locations where landmarks are not available to help navigate (in deserts, on seas), objects in the sky are the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Swinging With Style
Students experientially learn about the characteristics of a simple physics phenomenon - the pendulum - by riding on playground swings. They use pendulum terms and a timer to experiment with swing variables. They extend their knowledge...
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Teach Engineering: Permeable Pavement
In this activity, students investigate how different riparian ground covers, such as grass and pavement, affect river flooding. They learn about permeable and impermeable materials through the measurement how much water is absorbed by...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Tools and Equipment, Part I
Through a series of activities, students discover that the concept of mechanical advantage describes reality fairly well. They act as engineers creating a design for a ramp at a construction site by measuring four different inclined...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Machines and Tools, Part Ii
In this activity, students gain first-hand experience with the mechanical advantage of pulleys. Students are given the challenge of helping save a whale by moving it from an aquarium back to its natural habitat into the ocean. They set...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Magician's Catapult
In this activity, students reinforce their understanding of compound machines by building a catapult. This compound machine consists of a lever and a wheel-and-axel. Catapults have been designed by engineers for a variety of purposes -...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Watch It Slide!
Students use inclined planes as they recreate the difficult task of raising a monolith of rock to build a pyramid. They compare the push and pull of different-sized blocks up an inclined plane, determine the angle of inclination, and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Pulley'ing Your Own Weight
Using common materials (spools, string, soap), students learn how a pulley can be used to easily change the direction of a force, making the moving of large objects easier. They see the difference between fixed and movable pulleys, and...
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Teach Engineering: Rocket Power
By making and testing simple balloon rockets, students acquire a basic understanding of Newton's third law of motion as it applies to rockets. Using balloons, string, straws and tape, they see how rockets are propelled by expelling...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Spacecraft Design: Beat the Heat
To understand the challenges of satellite construction, student teams design and create model spacecraft to protect vital components from the harsh conditions found on Mercury and Venus. They use slices of butter in plastic eggs to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Slingshot to the Outer Planets
Students are introduced to the engineering challenges involved with interplanetary space travel. In particular, they learn about the gravity assist or "slingshot" maneuver often used by engineers to send spacecraft to the outer planets....
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Building a Fancy Spectrograph
Students create and decorate their own spectrographs using simple materials and holographic diffraction gratings. A holographic diffraction grating acts like a prism, showing the visual components of light. After building the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Engineering Your Own Spectrograph
Students use simple materials to design an open spectrograph so they can calculate the angle light is bent when it passes through a holographic diffraction grating. A holographic diffraction grating acts like a prism, showing the visual...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Designing a Spectroscopy Mission
Students find and calculate the angle that light is transmitted through a holographic diffraction grating using trigonometry. After finding this angle, student teams design and build their own spectrographs, researching and designing a...
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Teach Engineering: Tower O' Power
In this activity, students learn about creating a design directly from a CAD (computer-aided design) program. They will design a tower in CAD and manufacture the parts with a laser cutter. A competition determines the tower design with...
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Teach Engineering: Viking Ship Design Challenge
In this design challenge, students learn about the Vikings from an engineering point-of-view. While investigating the history and anatomy of Viking ships, they learn how engineering solutions are shaped by the surrounding environment and...
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Teach Engineering: Building a Barometer
Students investigate the weather from a systems approach, learning how individual parts of a system work together to create a final product. Students learn how a barometer works to measure the Earth's air pressure by building a model out...
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Teach Engineering: Weather Alert
Students discuss the characteristics of storms, including the relationship of weather fronts and storms. Using simple materials, the students develop a model of a simple lightning detection system and analyze their model to determine its...
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Teach Engineering: Backyard Weather Station
In this hands-on activity, students use their senses to describe what the weather is doing and to predict what it might do next. After gaining a basic understanding of weather patterns, students will become state park engineers and build...
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Teach Engineering: Am I on the Radio?
During this activity, students create a working radio by soldering circuit components supplied from an AM radio kit. Since this activity is carried out in conjunction with the associated lessons concerning circuits and how an AM radio...