eGFI
Design and Build a Road Sign Support
Emergent engineers plan, construct, and experiment with a spaghetti noodle structure that could hold a load. Set them up for success by first showing them a four-minute video on engineering design and a slide show of different signposts....
Teach Engineering
Designing Bridges
Introduces your class to the types of loads experienced by a bridge. Groups calculate the ultimate load combinations to determine the maximum load requirement. Using this information, builders then determine the amount of material...
Curated OER
Wind Effects on Model Building: Pre-Lab for Truss Design and Testing
Emerging engineers perform pre-lab calculations in this first of a three-part lesson plan on model building. They determine the forces of tension and compression in a truss. After completion of the worksheet, pupils will draw a draft of...
Curated OER
What Floats Your Boat?
This open-ended boat building exercise is meant to be part of a three-lesson series on ships. Links to the other two lessons are included. This particular part is mostly a group lab activity in which they build a boat, find its load line...
Curated OER
What's Stronger? What's Stiffer?
Learners measure the length, width and height of different materials. In this design activity students complete a lab to see what engineers need to consider when planning a structure.
Curated OER
Skyscrapers
Students engineer their way through a hands-on science activity. In this architecture lesson, students examine dead loads and wind loads as they participate in the Skyscraper Challenge.
Curated OER
Forces and Graphing
Students analyze graphs to determine relationships between variables and rates of change. They determine the basic concepts about static reaction forces. They determine the slope and equation of a line.
Curated OER
Monkeying Around
Third graders study machines. They watch a video about and identify and chart machines they find at home and at school. They design and build simple and compound machines, create an advertisement for them and attempt to sell them at the...
Curated OER
Solar Cell Simulation
Second graders describe how energy moves from the Sun to the photovoltaic cell to the wire and to the load. In this solar cell simulation lesson, 2nd graders demonstrate the movement of photons and electrons to emulate how solar energy...
Curated OER
Simple Machine Test
Students complete several worksheets about machines. In this machine lesson students complete several handouts that describe the different machines and how pulleys work.
Curated OER
Forces on the Human Molecule
Young scholars conduct several simple lab activities to explore the five fundamental load types that can act on structures: tension, compression, shear, bending, and torsion. In this activity, students play the role of molecules in a...
Science Buddies
Science Buddies: Give It a Lift With a Lever
Simple machines allow us to do difficult tasks like lifting objects heavier than our body weight. In this science project you'll build a tabletop lever and measure how much effort it takes to lift an object by altering the length of the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Sum It Up: An Introduction to Static Equilibrium
Students are introduced to static equilibrium by learning how forces and torques are balanced in a well-designed engineering structure. A tower crane is presented as a simplified two-dimensional case. Using Popsicle sticks and hot glue,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Building Our Bridge to Fun!
Students identify different bridge designs and construction materials used in modern day engineering. They work in construction teams to create paper bridges and spaghetti bridges based on existing bridge designs. Students progressively...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Measuring Pressure
Students learn first-hand the relationship between force, area and pressure. They use a force sensor built from a LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT kit to measure the force required to break through a paper napkin. An interchangeable top at the end of...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Power of Mechanical Advantage
Students learn about the mechanical advantage offered by pulleys in an interactive and game-like manner. By virtue of the activity's mechatronic presentation, they learn to study a mechanical system not as a static image, but rather as a...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Stress That You Apply
Students learn about contact stress and its applications in engineering. They are introduced to the concept of heavy loads, such as buildings, elephants, people and traffic, and learn how those heavy loads apply contact stress. Through...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Feel the Stress
Working individually or in groups, students explore the concept of stress (compression) through physical experience and math. They discover why it hurts more to poke themselves with mechanical pencil lead than with an eraser. Then they...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Fairly Fundamental Facts About Forces & Structures
This instructional activity will introduce students to the five fundamental loads: compression, tension, shear, bending, and torsion.
Scholastic
Scholastic: Dirtmeister's Science Reporters: The Lever
This site provides a description of the lever and its many uses.
![Ohio State Univ.: Simple Machines & Mechanical Advantage [Pdf] Handout](https://d15y2dacu3jp90.cloudfront.net/images/attachment_defaults/resource/large/FPO-knovation.png "Ohio State Univ.: Simple Machines & Mechanical Advantage [Pdf] Handout")
Ohio State University
Ohio State Univ.: Simple Machines & Mechanical Advantage [Pdf]
This site details how simple machines create a mechanical advantage for humans. Levers, theoretical mechanical advantage, actual mechanical advantage, and pulley systems are discussed.
Museum of Science
Museum of Science and Industry: Online Science: Build a Lever
Step-by-step illustrated instructions for an experiment investigating how a lever works. An explanation of the science involved is given at the end.
Other
Need: Measuring Electricity [Pdf]
This site details many of the ways in which to measure electricity. Among the topics covered by this page is resistance and voltage as well as electrical energy and Ohm's Law.
Michigan Technological University
Michigan Tech: Materials Science and Engineering: Creep Experiment
Explore the concept of creep in detail, and then look at the results of a real creep experiment.