TeachEngineering
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...
Other
Exxon Mobile: Be an Engineer
Where can an engineering degree take students? Read the stories of innovative thinkers and engineers.
American Institute of Biological Sciences
Action Bioscience: Ethical Issues in Genetic Engineering and Transgenics
Utilizing the developments in transgenic biotechnology and genetic engineering for use in the medical fields raises ethical questions.
National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation: Chemistry & Materials: Creating Molecules and Materials by Design
Describes the progress being made in materials engineering, so that one day in the not too distant future scientists will easily be able to use a computer to design materials that meet any required properties.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Inside the Dna
Students conduct their own research to discover and understand the methods designed by engineers and used by scientists to analyze or validate the molecular structure of DNA, proteins and enzymes, as well as basic information about gel...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Viscous Fluids
Students are introduced to the similarities and differences in the behaviors of elastic solids and viscous fluids. Several types of fluid behaviors are described--Bingham plastic, Newtonian, shear thinning and shear thickening--along...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Blood Pressure Basics
Learners study how heart valves work and investigate how valves that become faulty over time can be replaced with advancements in engineering and technology. Learning about the flow of blood through the heart, students are able to fully...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Walk, Run, Jump!
In this activity, students participate in a series of timed relay races using their skeletal muscles. The compare the movement of skeletal muscle and relate how engineers help astronauts exercise skeletal muscles in space.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Muscles, Muscles Everywhere
This activity helps students learn about the three different types of muscles and how outer space affects astronauts' muscles. They will discover how important it is for astronauts to get adequate exercise both on Earth and in outer...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Surgical Resident for a Day
In this activity, students will become surgical residents for the day. As a team, they will be asked to use surgical instruments to complete a task inside of a black box. They will be able to see inside of the box with the help of a...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Just Passing Through
This lesson helps students explore the functions of the kidney and its place in the urinary system. Students learn how engineers design instruments to help people when kidneys are not functioning properly or when environmental conditions...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Fighting Back!
This lesson describes the major components and functions of the immune system and the role of engineers in keeping the body healthy (e.g., vaccinations and antibiotics, among other things). This lesson also discusses how an astronaut's...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Building the Neuron
In this activity, students design and build neuron models based on observations made while viewing neurons through a microscope.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Stress, Strain and Hooke's Law
This lesson offers an introduction to Hooke's Law as well as stress-strain relationships. Students will first learn the governing equations. Then students will work through several example problems first individually, then as a class. In...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Presenting Painless Breast Cancer Detection!
This lesson culminates the unit with the Go Public phase of the legacy cycle. In the associated activity, young scholars must depict a tumor amidst healthy body tissue using a graph in Microsoft Excel. In addition, students will design a...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Protect That Pill
Students reinforce their knowledge of the different parts of the digestive system and explore the concept of simulation by developing a pill coating that can withstand the churning actions and acidic environment found in the stomach....
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Convertible Shoes: Function, Fashion and Design
Students teams design and build shoe prototypes that convert between high heels and athletic shoes. They apply their knowledge about the mechanics of walking and running as well as shoe design (as learned in the associated lesson) to...
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: Cellular Respiration and Population Growth
Two lessons and their associated activities explore cellular respiration and population growth in yeasts. Yeast cells are readily obtained and behave predictably, so they are very appropriate to use in middle school classrooms. In the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Polluted Air = Polluted Lungs
To gain a better understanding of the roles and functions of components of the human respiratory system and our need for clean air, students construct model lungs that include a diaphragm and chest cavity. They see how air moving in and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Saving a Life: Heart Valve Replacement
Students use their knowledge about how healthy heart valves function to design, construct and implant prototype replacement mitral valves for hypothetical patients' hearts. Building on what they learned in the associated lesson about...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Creepy Silly Putty
Students learn about viscoelastic material behavior, such as strain rate dependence and creep, by using silly putty, an easy-to-make polymer material. They learn how to make silly putty, observe its behavior with different strain rates,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Curb the Epidemic!
Using a website simulation tool, students build on their understanding of random processes on networks to interact with the graph of a social network of individuals and simulate the spread of a disease. They decide which two individuals...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Dna Forensics and Color Pigments
Students perform DNA forensics using food coloring to enhance their understanding of DNA fingerprinting, restriction enzymes, genotyping and DNA gel electrophoresis. They place small drops of different food coloring ("water-based paint")...