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Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Balloons

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Students follow the steps of the engineering design process as they design and construct balloons for aerial surveillance. After their first attempts to create balloons, they are given the associated Estimating Buoyancy lesson to learn...
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Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Thinking Green!

For Teachers 7th - 9th
Students show their creativity and think like engineers as they design products or services that can be used to improve environmental problems in the community. While being aware of the steps of the engineering design process, students...
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Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Build a Toy Workshop

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Working as if they are engineers who work for (the hypothetical) Build-a-Toy Workshop company, students apply their imaginations and the engineering design process to design and build prototype toys with moving parts. They set up...
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Unit Plan
PBS

Pbs Kids: Design Squad: Ets1 1:activities and Videos: Health and Improving Lives

For Students 4th - 7th
This PBS site contains activities that are hands-on challenges, animations, career profiles, and videos that focus on the engineering design process. They use simple materials, allow for multiple solutions, and are ideal for ages 9-12.
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Lesson Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: The Artificial Bicep

For Teachers 4th - 7th
Students learn more about how muscles work and how biomedical engineers can help keep the muscular system healthy. Following the engineering design process, they create their own biomedical device to aid in the recovery of a strained...
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Lesson Plan
TryEngineering

Try Engineering: Working With Watermills

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Teams of students design, build, test, and evaluate a working watermill made from everyday materials. Lesson explores how watermills generate energy from water, while students gain an understanding of the structural engineering design...
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Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Let the Blood Flow

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Students work as biomedical engineers to find liquid solutions that can clear away polyvinyl acetate polymer "blood clots" in model arteries (made of clear, flexible tubing). Teams create samples of the "blood clot" polymer with...
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Unit Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Using Stress and Strain to Detect Cancer

For Teachers 9th - 10th
In this project, students are challenged to answer the question "Is there a way to detect the presence of tumors that isn't as painful as mammography but more reliable and quantifiable than a breast-self exam or clinical breast-exams?"....
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Handout
PBS

Pbs Kids: Design Squad Challenge: Pop Fly [Pdf]

For Students 3rd - 8th
Hands-on challenge to design and build a way to launch a Ping-Pong ball high enough to catch it. Provides full list of materials with ideas on how to design, build, test, and redesign it if necessary. Activity focuses on the engineering...
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Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Right on Target: Catapult Game

For Teachers 5th - 6th
Students experience the engineering design process as they design and build accurate and precise catapults using common materials. They use their catapults to participate in a game in which they launch Ping-Pong balls to attempt to hit...
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Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Trash to Treasure!

For Teachers 6th - 8th
Student teams use the engineering design process to create a useful product of their choice out of recyclable items and "trash." The class is given a "landfill" of reusable items, such as aluminum cans, cardboard, paper, juice boxes,...
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Lesson Plan
TryEngineering

Try Engineering: Working With Wind Energy

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Young scholars use the engineering design process to build a working windmill out of everyday materials. Lesson explores the technology behind wind energy being used to generate energy in businesses and homes worldwide.
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Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Modern Day Pyramids

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Students investigate the ways in which ancient technologies - six types of simple machines and combinations - are used to construct modern buildings. As they work together to solve a design problem (designing and building a modern...
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Lesson Plan
Better Lesson

Better Lesson: Magnet Engineering Design Challenge

For Students 3rd
Use the engineering design process to create a solution to problem involving magnets?
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Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Broken Bones

For Teachers 9th - 10th
The purpose of this activity is to introduce students to the concept of the engineering design process and to teach them how to apply it. In "Broken Bones," students will explore the steps of the engineering design process. They will...
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Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Edible Rovers High School

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Students act as Mars exploratory rover engineers, designing, building and displaying their edible rovers to a design review. To begin, they evaluate rover equipment and material options to determine which parts might fit in their given...
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Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Shapes of Strength

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Students are introduced to brainstorming and the design process in problem solving as it relates to engineering. They perform an activity to develop and understand problem solving with an emphasis on learning from history. Using only...
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Lesson Plan
TryEngineering

Try Engineering: Designing Drones

For Teachers 3rd - 7th
This lesson focuses on helicopters and drones, how they fly, how they are used in different ways that help people and the environment. Teams of students explore helicopter flight; and design, build, and test their own simple rotor out of...
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Activity
Science Buddies

Science Buddies: Hull Design and Hydrodynamics

For Students 9th - 10th
Experiment with designs of different hulls for boats to see which hulls are suited for which purpose. The Science Buddies project ideas are set up consistently beginning with an abstract, objective, and introduction, followed by a...
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Activity
Technovation

Curiosity Machine: Challenges: Engineer a Communication Network

For Students Pre-K - 1st
Using some everyday household materials, students are challenged to design and build a network to send communication signals in multiple directions to multiple people. To help students accomplish this challenge there are tips, a lesson...
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Activity
Technovation

Curiosity Machine: Challenges: Engineer a Flow Control System

For Students Pre-K - 1st
In this engineering challenge, students will build a system that controls the movement of material and shuts off automatically. This site includes tips, a lesson plan, and a place for students to document their design process.
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Handout
Other

Branksome Hall Asia: Design and Inquiry: Sustainable Design

For Students 9th - 10th
Sustainable design is a philosophy of developing products in line with social, economic, and ecological sustainability principles. In design, it is important to understand the distinction between Green Design and Sustainable Design....
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Lesson Plan
Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education, Stevens Institute of Technology

Ciese: Scratch My Back: Children's Engineering Activity

For Teachers K - 1st
This instructional activity is based on the book Big Smelly Bear by Britta Teckentrup. In the book, a big, smelly bear has an itch in the middle of his back and can't scratch it. Nothing the bear tries works. Using the Engineering Design...
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Lesson Plan
Better Lesson

Better Lesson: Engineering Solutions

For Students K - 1st
Anyone who has attempted one of those "claw machine" games at local restaurants or retailers knows how impossible it seems to win. This activity will get students using the engineering design process to develop a claw that will actually...