TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Package Those Foods!
This activity provides students with the opportunity to create a food package for a specific food. The students have three components to focus on in the design of their food package. The package will have to keep the food clean, protect...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Blast Off
Rockets need a lot of thrust to get into space. In this instructional activity, young scholars learn how rocket thrust is generated with propellant. The two types of propellants are discussed and relation to their use on rockets is...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Mixtures and Solutions
This unit covers introductory concepts of mixtures and solutions. Students think about how mixtures and solutions, and atoms and molecules can influence new technologies developed by engineers. The first lesson explores the fundamentals...
American Chemical Society
Middle School Chemistry: Chemical Reactions & Engineering Design
This instructional activity begins with a story about rescuing reptile eggs from a new construction site. Using the story as motivation, students are presented with an engineering design challenge: Build a portable device which can warm,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Everyday Polymers
Students explore the chemical identities of polymeric materials frequently used in their everyday lives. They learn how chemical composition affects the physical properties of the materials that they encounter and use frequently, as well...
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...
National Institutes of Health
Ncbi: The Molecular Biology of the Cell: The Chemical Components of a Cell
Advanced chapter of the book "The Molecular Biology of the Cell" describes and provides illustrations of our most current understanding of the chemical makeup of cells and their components. Explains in detail how electron activity keeps...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Feel Better Faster: All About Flow Rate
All of us have felt sick at some point in our lives. Many times, we find ourselves asking, "What is the quickest way that I can start to feel better?" During this two-lesson unit, students study that question and determine which form of...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Flocculants: The First Step to Cleaner Water!
Students experience firsthand one of the most common water treatment types in the industry today, flocculants. They learn how the amount of suspended solids in water is measured using the basic properties of matter and light. In...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Put a Spark in It! Electricity
Uncountable times every day "with the merest flick of a finger"each one of us calls on electricity to do our bidding. What would your life be like without electricity? Students begin learning about electricity with an introduction to the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Test and Treat Before You Drink
Students learn about water quality testing and basic water treatment processes and technology options. Biological, physical and chemical treatment processes are addressed, as well as physical and biological water quality testing,...
Curated OER
An Image of Chemical Engineer, Kristin Hart
This site provides interesting and relevant information on engineering careers by offering a look into the life of a chemical engineer. Also, site describes what type of courses a student should study to pursue an engineering career.
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: Glaciers, Water and Wind, Oh My!
This hands-on activity explores five different forms of erosion (chemical, water, wind, glacier and temperature). Students rotate through stations and model each type of erosion on rocks, soils and minerals. The students record their...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Fossil Fondue
To understand how fossils are formed, students model the process of fossilization by making fossils using small toy figures and melted chocolate. They extend their knowledge to the many ways that engineers aid in the study of fossils,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Energy Forms and States Demonstrations
Demonstrations explain the concepts of energy forms (sound, chemical, radiant [light], electrical, atomic [nuclear], mechanical, thermal [heat]) and states (potential, kinetic).
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Counting Calories
The students discover the basics of heat transfer in this activity by constructing a constant pressure calorimeter to determine the heat of solution of potassium chloride in water. They first predict the amount of heat consumed by the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Measuring Surface Tension
Students observe capillary action in glass tubes of varying sizes. Then they use the capillary action to calculate the surface tension in each tube. They find the average surface tensions and calculate the statistical errors.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Investigating Contact Angle
Students observe how water acts differently when placed on hydrophilic and hydrophobic surfaces. They determine which coatings are best to cause surfaces to shed water quickly or reduce the "fogging" caused by condensation.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Thirsty for Gold
Student teams conduct an experiment that uses gold nanoparticles as sensors of chemical agents to determine which of four sports drinks has the most electrolytes. In this way, students are introduced to gold nanoparticles and their...
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: Concentrate This! Sugar or Salt
Students investigate the property dependence between concentrations and boiling point. In Section 1, students first investigate the boiling point of various liquid solutions. In Section 2 they analyze data collected from the entire class...