Technovation
Curiosity Machine: Challenges: Engineer a Space Tool
Using common household items, make a tool that an astronaut could use to pick up an object in space. This site also includes tips, lesson plans, and a place for students to document their engineering design process.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Groundwater Detectives
Student teams locate a contaminant spill in a hypothetical site by measuring the pH of soil samples. Then they predict the direction of groundwater flow using mathematical modeling. They also use the engineering design process to come up...
Technovation
Curiosity Machine: Challenges: Engineer an Exoskeleton
This site challenges students to build a wearable device that will detect when your body moves. The site contains tips, a lesson plan, and a place for students to document their engineering design process.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Simulation in Healthcare
Students learn how engineering design is applied to solve healthcare problems by using an engineering tool called simulation. While engineering design is commonly used to study and design everything from bridges, factories, airports to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Design Step 4: Engineering Analysis
Engineering analysis distinguishes true engineering design from "tinkering." In this activity, students are guided through an example engineering analysis scenario for a scooter. Then they perform a similar analysis on the design...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Design Step 2: Research the Problem
Through Internet research, patent research, standards and codes research, user interviews (if possible) and other techniques (idea web, reverse engineering), students further develop the context for their design challenge. In subsequent...
Other
Ontario Council for Technology Education: Designing a Bus Shelter [Pdf]
By the end of this project, the student will be able to understand and work through the stages of the design process, assess and develop design criteria when creating concept and scaled sketches, and use computer design software...
Other
Ontario Council for Technology Education: Designing and Testing a Crane [Pdf]
By the end of this project, students will be familiar with the 6 different simple machines and will be able to identify how these machines are used in products and tools they use on a daily basis. They will investigate how mechanical...
PBS
Pbs Learning Media: Hedy Lamarr: Engineering and Invention
Discover Hedy Lamarr's contributions as a woman in STEM in this video from the American Masters film, Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story. Lamarr has received belated acknowledgement for inventing frequency hopping, the basis of secure...
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Introducing Engineering
There is something gross under the cafeteria table. Do you pick it up? Gross! How about we mimic a bird's beak to solve the problem of picking up our trash? This lesson models walking through the first few steps of the Engineering Design...
Thinkport Education
Thinkport: Water, Water, Everywhere: The Engineering Design Process
Students brainstorm new ideas during part of the engineering process of designing a water purification system.
CK-12 Foundation
Ck 12: Physical Science: Technological Design Process
[Free Registration/Login may be required to access all resource tools.] Technological design and steps of the technological design process.
Science Buddies
Science Buddies: The Design Process: Creating a Stronger Truss
This is an interesting project that explores which geometrical shapes make the strongest bridge truss structures. It is a good introduction to the engineering design process. You'll design three different trusses, and use online...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Design Inspired by Nature
Students discover how engineers can use biomimicry to enhance their designs. They learn how careful observation of nature can lead to new innovations and products. In this activity, students reverse engineer a flower to glean design...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Paper Drop Design Competition
Using paper, paper clips and tape, student teams design flying devices to (1) stay in the air as long as possible and (2) land as close as possible to a given target. Student teams will use the engineering design process to guide them...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Simple Machines and Modern Day Engineering Analogies
Students apply the mechanical advantages and problem-solving capabilities of six types of simple machines (wedge, wheel and axle, lever, inclined plane, screw, pulley) as they discuss modern structures in the spirit of the engineers and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Portable Wheelchair Ramp Challenge
Students follow the steps of the engineering design process while learning more about assistive devices and biomedical engineering applied to basic structural engineering concepts. Their engineering challenge is to design, build and test...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Hidden in Plain Sight
Steganography is the science and art of hiding messages in plain sight so only the sender and intended recipient know the existence of a message. Steganography can be characterized as security through obscurity. Through this lesson,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is Engineering? What Is Design?
An overview of engineering and design which introduces the students to the basic steps of the engineering design process. This lesson challenges students to plan a picnic for their friends by considering its various components as they go...
![Pbs Kids: Design Squad Challenge: Paddle Power [Pdf] Activity](https://content.lessonplanet.com/knovation/original/240133-269c480d57012b98a42b2a6067ff8946.jpg?1661182394 "Pbs Kids: Design Squad Challenge: Paddle Power [Pdf] Activity")
PBS
Pbs Kids: Design Squad Challenge: Paddle Power [Pdf]
Hands-on challenge to design and build a paddle boat that moves across water using a rubber band as its power source. Provides full list of materials with ideas on how to design, build, test, and redesign it if necessary. Activity...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Cutting Through Soil
Students pretend they are agricultural engineers during the colonial period and design a miniature plow that cuts through a "field" of soil. They are introduced to the engineering design process and learn of several famous historical...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Engineers Love Pizza, Too!
In this service-learning engineering project, students follow the steps of the engineering design process to design an assistive eating device for a client. More specifically, they design a prototype device to help a young girl who has a...
Other
The Design Museum: Can You Redesign an Object to Make It Easier to Use?
Grant Douglas has cerebral palsy and needs assistance to eat. While he was sitting at home being fed cornflakes by his mum, the phone rang. She answered it and as she talked, Grant could see his cornflakes getting soggier and soggier....
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Super Slinger Engineering Challenge
Students are challenged to design, build and test small-scale launchers while they learn and follow the steps of the engineering design process. For the challenge, the "slingers" must be able to aim and launch Ping-Pong balls 20 feet...