PBS
Pbs Kids: Design Squad Challenge: Four Corners (Pdf) [Pdf]
Hands-on challenge to build a machine out of cardboard that runs smoothly and dependably. Provides full list of materials with illustrations and ideas on how to build, test, and redesign it if necessary. Activity focuses on the...
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: Flying T Shirts
During this engineering design/build project, students investigate many different solutions to a problem. Their design challenge is to find a way to get school t-shirts up into the stands during home sporting events. They follow the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Using Stress and Strain to Detect Cancer
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?"....
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Build a Toy Workshop
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...
PBS
Pbs Kids: Design Squad Challenge: Pop Fly [Pdf]
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...
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: Tunnel Through!
Students apply their knowledge about mountains and rocks to transportation engineering, with the task of developing a model mountain tunnel that simulates the principles behind real-life engineering design. Student teams design and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Waves Go Public!
Students apply everything they have learned over the course of the associated lessons about waves, light properties, the electromagnetic spectrum, and the structure of the eye, by designing devices that can aid color blind people in...
Other
American Society for Engineering Education: Building for Hurricanes
In this engineering design challenge about building in hurricane-prone regions, students learn that a solid base helps stabilize a structure by constructing, testing, and redesigning a tower that can support a tennis ball at least 18...
Other
The Design Museum: Lesson Plan: Redesign Your Kitchenware
Students will learn about the unique kettle invented by designer Philippe Starck. He designed the Hot Bertaa kettle to be different from everything else available. There was no lid to pour the water in, no handle, and no way of plugging...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Artificial Heart Design Challenge
Students are presented with a hypothetical scenario in which they are biomedical engineers asked to design artificial hearts. Using the engineering design process as a guide, the challenge is established and students brainstorm to list...
TryEngineering
Try Engineering: Can You Canoe?
Teams of students learn about the engineering design process as they design, build, and test a model canoe made with everyday materials. Lesson focuses on how materials engineering has impacted the manufacturing of canoes over time.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Clearing a Path to the Heart
Following the engineering design process and acting as biomedical engineers, student teams use everyday materials to design and develop devices and approaches to unclog blood vessels. They learn about the circulatory system, biomedical...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Android App Development
Students develop an app for an Android device that utilizes its built-in internal sensors, specifically the accelerometer. The goal of this activity is to teach programming design and skills using MIT's App Inventor software (free to...
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...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Mint Mobiles
Students design, build and test model race cars made from simple materials (lifesaver-shaped candies, plastic drinking straws, Popsicle sticks, index cards, tape) as a way to explore independent, dependent and control variables. They...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Balloons
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...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: My Moon Colony
Students are introduced to the futuristic concept of the moon as a place people can inhabit. They brainstorm what people would need to live on the moon and then design a fantastic Moon colony and decide how to power it. Student use the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Thinking Green!
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...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Artificial Bicep
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...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Let the Blood Flow
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...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Trash to Treasure!
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,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Design a Bicycle Helmet
The goal of the activities is for students to understand the basics of engineering associated with safety products. Using a bicycle helmet helps to protect the brain and neck during a crash. In order to do this effectively, helmets must...