TryEngineering
Try Engineering: Tall Tower Challenge
Students learn about the engineering design process as they design, build, test, and evaluate the tallest tower they can build with just straws, pipe cleaners, and paperclips that can support the weight of a golf ball for two minutes....
TryEngineering
Try Engineering: Tinkering With Tops
Learners learn about the engineering design process as they design, build, and test spinning tops using everyday materials. The objective of the design is to have the top spin at least 10 seconds within a thirty centimeter diameter.
TryEngineering
Try Engineering: Classroom Paper Recycling
Students learn about the engineering design process as they devlop their own recycled paper using everyday materials. The objective of the lesson is to learn how chemical engineers work in teams to develop and improve the manufacturing...
TryEngineering
Try Engineering: Heart of the Matter
Students learn about artificial heart valves and the engineering design process used in mechanical heart valve designs. The objective of the lesson is to develop an understanding of the interface between man and machine and the impact of...
TryEngineering
Try Engineering: Engineering Ups and Downs
Engineering design lesson examines the principles behind working elevators. Teams of students explore how elevators work, then design, build, and evaluate their own elevator to service a toy car garage.
TryEngineering
Try Engineering: Temperature Tactics
Students practice the engineering design process as they explore devices used to measure changes in temperature. They work in teams to design, build, test, and evaluate their own temperature gauge made from everyday materials.
Ruth Patrick Science Education Center
Ruth Patrick Science Education Center: Shaking It Up With Earthquake Engineering
Students will learn basic information about earthquakes and their impact. They then follow the engineering design process as they construct earthquake-resistant buildings using toothpicks and marshmallows. The buildings are tested using...
Thinkport Education
Thinkport: Designing a Healthier, Happier Meal
Using the engineering design process, develop and market a healthy fast food children's meal.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Car Collision Testing & Tradeoffs: Don't Crack Humpty
Student groups are provided with a generic car base on which to design a device/enclosure to protect an egg as it rolls down a ramp at increasing slopes. During this activity, student teams design, build and test their prototype...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Engineering in Reverse!
Students learn about the process of reverse engineering and how this technique is used to improve upon technology. Students analyze push-toys and draw diagrams of the predicted mechanisms inside the toys. Then, they disassemble the toys...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Energy Systems and Solutions
The Energy Systems and Solutions unit brings students through the exploration of science and engineering concepts as they relate to energy issues in everyday life. Issues surrounding energy production and energy consumption provide a...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Viking Ship Design Challenge
In this design challenge, students learn about the Vikings from an engineering point-of-view. While investigating the history and anatomy of Viking ships, they learn how engineering solutions are shaped by the surrounding environment and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Edible Rovers
Students act as Mars exploratory rover engineers. They evaluate rover equipment options and determine what parts fit in a provided NASA budget. With a given parts list, teams use these constraints to design for their rover. The students...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Hybrid Vehicle Design Challenge
This module is written for a first-year algebra-based physics class, though it could easily be modified for conceptual physics. It is intended to provide hands-on activities to teach the overarching concept of energy, as it relates to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Build Your Own Insect Trap
In this hands-on activity students design a trap to catch a fictional insect. They must build the trap based on things they learn about the insect.
Other
Lincoln Public Schools: Applied Technology & Engineering: Bridge Busters [Pdf]
In this activity, students design and build the lightest bridge to support the heaviest load. They investigate different bridge designs and building materials, learn key terminology, and test their prototypes in order to meet the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Engineering and the Periodic Table
Students learn about the periodic table and how pervasive the elements are in our daily lives. After reviewing the table organization and facts about the first 20 elements, they play an element identification game. They also learn that...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Bumps and Bruises
Students learn about the role engineers play in creating protective gear for sports. Students then build a protective landing pad to catch a dropped egg without it breaking
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Implementing Biomimicry and Sustainable Design
This unit provides students with an opportunity to study ecological relationships with an emphasis on the Sonoran Desert. Students appreciate the complexity and balance that supports the exchange of energy and matter within food webs....
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Protect Those Eyes
Students design and build prototypes for protective eyewear. They choose different activities or sports that require protective eyewear and design a device for that particular use. Students learn about the many ways in which the eyes can...
Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education, Stevens Institute of Technology
Ciese: Reverse Engineering of a Common Product
A telecollaborative project where students communicate engineering concepts across the globe. Student tasks are to deconstruct a common device, then design reassembly instructions for others worldwide to follow to attempt to reconstruct...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Sticks and Stones Will Break That Bone!
Students learn about the strength of bones and methods of helping to mend fractured bones. During a class demonstration, a chicken bone is broken by applying a load until it reaches a point of failure (fracture). Then, working as...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Splash, Pop, Fizz: Rube Goldberg Machines
Refreshed with an understanding of the six simple machines; screw, wedge, pully, incline plane, wheel and axle, and lever, student groups receive materials and an allotted amount of time to act as mechanical engineers to design and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Students as Scientists
This curricular unit contains two lessons that let students actually do the work of scientists as they design their own experiments to answer questions they generate. In the first lesson and its associated activity, students conduct a...