TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: On Track Unit Conversion
Students use three tracks marked on the floor, one in yards, one in feet and one in inches. As they start and stop a robot specific distances on a "runway," they can easily determine the equivalent measurements in other units by looking...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Maze Challenge
As the first engineering design challenge of the unit, students are introduced to the logic for solving a maze. student groups apply that logic to program LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots to navigate through a maze, first with no sensors, and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Hare and Snail Challenges
Students extend the ideas learned in the maze challenge in this unit with a focus more on the robot design. They learn how to design the gear train from the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT servomotor to the wheel to make the LEGO taskbot go faster...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Line Follower Challenge
Student groups are challenged to program robots with light sensors to follow a black line. Learning both the logic and skills behind programming robots for this challenge helps students improve their understanding of how robots work, and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Navigating a Maze
Students program LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots to go through a maze using movement blocks.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Using Waits, Loops and Switches
Students incorporate their knowledge of wait blocks, loops, and switches into their programming of the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots to perform different tasks depending on input from a sound sensor and two touch sensors. This activity...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Remote Control Using Bluetooth
Building on what they learned about wired and wireless electrical connections in the associated lesson, students use Android phones to take advantage of Bluetooth wireless connections to remotely guide LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots through...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: That's Hot! Robot Brain Programming
With the challenge to program computers to mimic the human reaction after touching a hot object, students program LEGO robots to "react" and move back quickly once their touch sensors bump into something. By relating human senses to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Commanding a Robot Using Sound
Students continue their exploration of the human senses and their engineering counterparts, focusing on the auditory sense. Working in small groups, students design, create and run programs to control the motion of LEGO TaskBots. By...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Hearing: How Do Our Ears Work?
Students learn about the anatomy of the ear and how the ears work as a sound sensor. Ear anatomy parts and structures are explained in detail, as well as how sound is transmitted mechanically and then electrically through them to the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Understanding Movement in Humans and Robots
This activity helps students understand how a LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robot moves using motors and wheels. Then students relate the concepts of decision-making actuation and motion in humans to their parallels in mechanized robots, and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Understanding Communication With a Robot
Student pairs first act out the instructions a robot is given with one person providing instructions and the other person following the instructions. This activity helps students understand how a robot is programmed and with what type of...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Nxt Ball Shooter
This activity helps students understand how a motor in a LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robot uses electricity produced by the battery to move a robot to do useful work in the form of throwing a ball. Students relate the concepts of electricity and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Movement Task Using Sensors Humans and Robots
This activity helps students understand the significance of programming and also how the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robot's sensors assist its movement and make programming easier. Students compare human senses to robot sensors, describing...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Master Driver
Students learn how rotational sensors measure distance, how mathematics can be used for real-world purposes, and about potential sources of error due to gearing when using rotation sensor readings for distance calculations.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Music by Touch
Through a hands-on design challenge involving LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots, students learn programming skills and logic design as they program robot computers to play sounds and rotate a wheel when a touch sensor is pressed, and then...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Control Using Sound
Students gain a deeper understanding of how sound sensors work through a hands-on design challenge involving LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT taskbots and sound sensors.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Follow the Light
A lesson involving LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots and light sensors, student pairs program the robots to follow a flashlight as its light beam moves around.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Don't Bump Into Me!
Students' understanding of how robotic ultrasonic sensors work is reinforced in a design challenge involving LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots and ultrasonic sensors.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Mars Rover App Creation
Based on their experience exploring the Mars rover Curiosity and learning about what engineers must go through to develop a vehicle like Curiosity, students create Android apps that can control LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots, simulating the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Peripheral Vision Lab
Students explore their peripheral vision by reading large letters on index cards. Then they repeat the experiment while looking through camera lenses, first a lens with a smaller focal length and then a lens with a larger focal length....
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Putting It All Together: Peripheral Vision
In this culminating activity of the unit, students bring together everything they've learned in order to write the code to solve the Grand Challenge. The code solution takes two images captured by robots and combines them to create an...
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: Our Bodies Have Computers and Sensors
Students learn about the human body's system components, specifically its sensory systems, nervous system and brain, while comparing them to robot system components, such as sensors and computers. The unit's life sciences-to-engineering...