TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Wasting Energy at Home
People use energy in all aspects of their lives - for cooking, lighting and entertainment. Much of this energy use takes place in buildings, such as our homes. To save money and reduce the impact on our environment, many people are...
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Teach Engineering: Stop Heat From Escaping
One way to conserve energy in a building is to use adequate insulation. Insulation helps keep the hot or cool air inside or outside of a building. Inefficient heating and cooling of buildings is a leading residential and industrial...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Greenewables
Students form expert engineering teams working for the (fictional) alternative energy consulting firm, Greenewables, Inc. Each team specializes in a form of renewable energy used to generate electrical power: passive solar, solar...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Path of Electrons
Students engage in an interactive "hot potato" demonstration to gain an appreciation for the flow of electrons through a circuit. Students role play the different parts of a simple circuit and send small items representing electrons...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Blackout!
Students read news reports and first-person accounts to imagine what it would be like to be in a blackout in a large city. They follow news reports as if the event were unfolding in real-time and keep weblogs or journals of their...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Seeing and Feeling Sound Vibrations
Students examine the existence of sound by listening to and seeing sound waves while conducting a set of simple activities as a class or in pairs at stations. Students describe sound in terms of its pitch, volume and frequency. They use...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Traveling Sound
Students explore how sound waves move through liquids, solids and gases in a series of simple sound energy experiments. Understanding the properties of sound and how sound waves travel helps engineers determine the best room shape and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Pitch and Frequency
To further their understanding of sound energy, students identify the different pitches and frequencies created by a vibrating ruler and a straw kazoo. They create high- and low-pitch sound waves.
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Teach Engineering: How Much Heat Will It Hold?
Students relate thermal energy to heat capacity by comparing the heat capacities of different materials and graphing the change in temperature over time for a specific material. Students learn why heat capacity is an important property...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Wind Power!
Students learn how engineers transform wind energy into electrical energy by building their own miniature wind turbines and measuring the electrical current it produces. They explore how design and position affect the electrical energy...
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Teach Engineering: Pea Soup Ponds
In this activity, students will learn how water can be polluted by algal blooms. They will grow algae with different concentrations of fertilizer or nutrients and analyze their results as environmental engineers working to protect a...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Stream Consciousness
During this activity, students will learn how environmental engineers monitor water quality in resource use and design. They will employ environmental indicators to assess the water quality of a nearby stream. Students will make general...
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Teach Engineering: Where Does All the Water Go?
The best way for students to understand how groundwater flows is to actually see it. In this activity, students will learn the vocabulary associated with groundwater and see a demonstration of groundwater flow. Students will learn about...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Full Is Full?
During this activity, students will learn about porosity and permeability and relate these concepts to groundwater flow. Students will use simple materials to conduct a porosity experiment and use the information to understand how...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What's Down the Well?
This activity looks at physical models of groundwater and how environmental engineers determine possible sites for drinking water wells. During this activity, students will create their own groundwater well model using a coffee can and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Eek, It Leaks!
During this activity, students will try to construct model landfill liners out of two-inch strips of garbage bags within resource constraints. The challenge is to construct a bag that will hold one cup of water without leaking. This...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Straining Out the Dirt
In this activity, students build a water filter with activated carbon, cotton and other materials to remove chocolate powder from water.
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Teach Engineering: From Lake to Tap
In this activity, students will use a tutorial on the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's website to learn about how surface water is treated to make it safe to drink.
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Teach Engineering: I Breathe What??
In this activity, students will capture and examine the particles to gain an appreciation of how much dust, pollen and other particulate matter is present in the air around them. Students will place "pollution detectors" at various...
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Teach Engineering: Moebius Strips
In this activity, students make Moebius strips and use them to demonstrate the interconnectedness of an environment. They will explore the natural cycles (water, oxygen/carbon dioxide, carbon, nitrogen) within the environment.
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Teach Engineering: Issues, Issues Everywhere
In this activity, students will learn to identify different opinions related to an issue as well as the things (information, values and beliefs) that influence those opinions. They will use an opinion spectrum to analyze the range of...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Issues Awareness
In this activity, students will conduct a survey to identify the environmental issues (in their community, their country and the world) for which people are concerned. They will tally and graph the results. Also, students will discuss...
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Teach Engineering: Cool Views
In this activity, students will learn the meaning of preservation and conservation and identify themselves and others as preservationists or conservationists in relation to specific environmental issues. They will understand how an...
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Teach Engineering: Is That Natural?
Students will brainstorm ways that they use - and waste - natural resources. Also, they will respond to some facts about population growth and how people use petroleum. Lastly, students will consider the different ways that engineers...