TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Boom Construction
Student teams design their own booms (bridges) and engage in a friendly competition with other teams to test their designs. Each team strives to design a boom that is light, can hold a certain amount of weight, and is affordable to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Cold Can You Go?
Students explore materials engineering by modifying the material properties of water. Specifically, they use salt to lower the freezing point of water and test it by making ice cream. Using either a simple thermometer or a mechatronic...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Let the Blood Flow
Students work as biomedical engineers to find liquid solutions that can clear away polyvinyl acetate polymer "blood clots" in model arteries (made of clear, flexible tubing). Teams create samples of the "blood clot" polymer with...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Designing a Medical Device
Students learn the engineering design process by following the steps, from problem identification to designing a device and evaluating its efficacy and areas for improvement. A quick story at the beginning of the activity sets up the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Model Heart Valves
Students use provided materials to design and build prototype artificial heart valves. Their functioning is demonstrated using water to simulate the flow of blood through the heart. Upon completion, teams demonstrate their fully...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: e.g. Benedict's Ambulance Patient Safety Challenge
Students are given a fictional client statement- the engineering challenge- and are directed to follow the steps of the EDP to design prototype patient safety systems for small-size model ambulances.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Portable Wheelchair Ramp Challenge
Students follow the steps of the engineering design process while learning more about assistive devices and biomedical engineering applied to basic structural engineering concepts. Their engineering challenge is to design, build and test...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Wristwatch Design for the Visually Impaired
Students are given a fictional client statement and required to follow the steps of the engineering design process to design a new wristwatch face for a visually impaired student at their school.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Penny Perfect Properties (Solid Liquid Interactions)
Students investigate the property dependence between liquid and solid interfaces and determine observable differences in how liquids react to different solid surfaces. They compare copper pennies and plastic "coins" as the two test...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Energy Systems and Solutions
The Energy Systems and Solutions unit brings students through the exploration of science and engineering concepts as they relate to energy issues in everyday life. Issues surrounding energy production and energy consumption provide a...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Life Science
This unit covers the processes of photosynthesis, extinction, biomimicry and bioremediation. In the first lesson on photosynthesis, students learn how engineers use the natural process of photosynthesis as an exemplary model of a complex...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Robot Design Challenges
Through the two lessons and five activities in this unit, students' knowledge of sensors and motors is integrated with programming logic as they perform complex tasks using LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots and software.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Using Stress and Strain to Detect Cancer
In this project, students are challenged to answer the question "Is there a way to detect the presence of tumors that isn't as painful as mammography but more reliable and quantifiable than a breast-self exam or clinical breast-exams?"....
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Hybrid Vehicle Design Challenge
This module is written for a first-year algebra-based physics class, though it could easily be modified for conceptual physics. It is intended to provide hands-on activities to teach the overarching concept of energy, as it relates to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Teaching the Engineering Design Process
Students follow the steps of the engineering design process (EDP) while learning about assistive devices and biomedical engineering. They first go through a design-build-test activity to learn the steps of the cyclical engineering design...
TeachEngineering
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...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Pharmaceutical Research Design Problem
Through this lesson and its associated activity, learners 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: Does It Work? Test and Test Again
Testing is critical to any design, whether it be in the creation of new software or building a bridge across a wide river. Despite risking the quality of the design, the testing stage is often hurried in order to get products to market....
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Designing Medical Devices for the Ear
Students are introduced to biomedical engineering and the engineering design process through a short lecture and an activity in which they design their own medical devices for retrieving foreign bodies from the ear canal. They learn...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Engineering and the Periodic Table
Students learn about the periodic table and how pervasive the elements are in our daily lives. After reviewing the table organization and facts about the first 20 elements, they play an element identification game. They also learn that...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Edible Rovers High School
Students act as Mars exploratory rover engineers, designing, building and displaying their edible rovers to a design review. To begin, they evaluate rover equipment and material options to determine which parts might fit in their given...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Bumps and Bruises
Students learn about the role engineers play in creating protective gear for sports. Students then build a protective landing pad to catch a dropped egg without it breaking
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Build Your Own Insect Trap
In this hands-on activity students design a trap to catch a fictional insect. They must build the trap based on things they learn about the insect.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Problem Solve Your School
Students apply what they have learned about the engineering design process to a real-life problem that affects them and/or their school. They chose a problem as a group, and then follow the engineering design process to come up with and...