TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Good, the Bad and the Electromagnet
Using plastic straws, wire, batteries and iron nails, student teams build and test two versions of electromagnets-one with and one without an iron nail at its core. They test each magnet's ability pick up loose staples, which reveals the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Microbes Know How to Work!
Students design systems that use microbes to break down a water pollutant (in this case, sugar). They explore how temperature affects the rate of pollutant decomposition.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Grow Your Own Algae!
Students discover how tiny microscopic plants can remove nutrients from polluted water. They also learn how to engineer a system to remove pollutants faster and faster by changing the environment for the algae.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Tension Racers!
Students see how different levels of surface tension affect water's ability to move. Teams "race" water droplets down tracks made of different materials, making measurements, collecting data, making calculations, graphing results and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Get Your Charge Away From Me!
This activity is an easy way to demonstrate the fundamental properties of polar and non-polar molecules (such as water and oil), how they interact, and the affect surfactants (such as soap) have on their interactions. Students see the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Down With the Clip!
Students see how surface tension can enable light objects (paper clips, peppercorns) to float on an island of oil in water, and subsequently sink when the surface tension of the oil/water interface is reduced by the addition of a...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Let's Get Dirty
In a very hands-on activity, students observe and feel the differences between two cleaning methods, with and without hand soap, using coffee grounds to represent "dirt."Most of the dirt and bacteria on our hands is encased in a thin...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Grading Congestion
Students construct a model roadway with congestion and apply their knowledge of level of service (LOS) to assign a grade to the road conditions. The roadway is simply a track outlined with cones or ropes with a few students walking...
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Teach Engineering: How Dense Are You Lab
Students determine the mass and volume of soil samples and calculate the density of the soils. They use this information to determine the suitability of the soil to support a building foundation.
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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: Electrocardiograph Building
This activity will build upon the concepts taught in the lesson The Strongest Pump of All. The activity will pull together the concepts of bioelectricity, electrical circuits, and biology. It will allow the students the opportunity to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Constructing Sonoran Desert Food Chains and Food Webs
Is the food chain shown above accurate? Does the first link depict a producer, the second link a herbivore, and the third link an omnivore / carnivore? Students must correctly determine whether a species is a producer or consumer, and...
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Teach Engineering: Computer Simulation of the Sonoran Desert Community
The computer program's simulation of a Sonoran desert community should ultimately strengthen the student's comprehension of what is required for a natural ecosystem to sustain itself (remain in balance). This computer simulation program...
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Teach Engineering: Adaptations for Aeronautical Engineering
This activity first asks the students to study the patterns of bird flight and understand that four main forces affect the flight abilities of a bird. They will study the shape, feather structure, and resulting differences in the pattern...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Bees Are Master Pollinators
The study of biomimicry and sustainable design promises great benefits in design application. It affords means by which to promote cost-effective, resourceful, non-polluting avenues for new enterprise. These "blueprints" have existed...
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Teach Engineering: Exploring Bone Mineral Density
In this activity, students will explore two given websites to gather information on Bone Mineral Density and how it is measured. They will also learn about X-rays in general, how they work and their different uses, along with other...
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Teach Engineering: Linear Regression of Bmd Scanners
Students complete an exercise showing logarithmic relationships and examine how to find the linear regression of data that does not seem linear upon initial examination. They relate number of BMD scanners to time.
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Teach Engineering: Light Intensity Lab
Students complete this Beer's Law activity in class. Students examine the attenuation of various thicknesses of transparencies. From this activity, students will understand that different substances absorb light differently. This can...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Applying Hooke's Law to Cancer Detection
Students explore Hooke's law while working in small groups at their lab benches. They collect displacement data for springs with unknown spring constants, k, by adding various masses of known weight. After exploring Hooke's law and...
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Teach Engineering: You Be the Radiologist!
In addition to the associated lesson, this activity functions as a summative assessment for the Using Stress and Strain to Detect Cancer unit. In this activity, students will create a 1-D strain plot in Microsoft Excel depicting the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Magnetic or Not?
Students explore the basic magnetic properties of different substances, particularly aluminum and steel. There is a common misconception that magnets attract all metals, largely due to the ubiquity of steel in metal products. The...
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Teach Engineering: Drawing Magnetic Fields
Students use a compass and a permanent magnet to trace the magnetic field lines produced by the magnet. By positioning the compass in enough spots around the magnet, the overall magnet field will be evident from the collection of arrows...
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Teach Engineering: Circuits and Magnetic Fields
In this activity, students use the same method as in the activity from lesson 2 to explore the magnetism due to electric current instead of a permanent magnet. Students use a compass and circuit to trace the magnetic field lines induced...
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Teach Engineering: Pill Dissolving Demo
In a class demonstration, the teacher places different pill types ("chalk" pill, gel pill, and gel tablet) into separate glass beakers of vinegar, representing human stomach acid. After 20-30 minutes, the pills dissolve. Students observe...