TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Exploring Solar Power
This unit provides students the opportunity to explore methods engineers have devised for harnessing sunlight to generate power. Students will initially explore heat transfer and heat storage through the construction, testing, and...
TryEngineering
Ieee: Try Engineering: Build Your Own Robot Arm
Students design and build a working robotic arm from a set of everyday items with a goal of having the arm be able to pick up a Styrofoam cup. Working in teams of three or four students, the students explore effective teamwork skills...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Convertible Shoes: Function, Fashion and Design
Students teams design and build shoe prototypes that convert between high heels and athletic shoes. They apply their knowledge about the mechanics of walking and running as well as shoe design (as learned in the associated lesson) to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Above Ground Storage Tank Design Project
In this culminating activity, student groups act as engineering design teams to come up with improved storage tank designs to make them less vulnerable to uplift, displacement and buckling in storm conditions.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Bernoulli's Principle
Bernoulli's principle relates the pressure of a fluid to its elevation and its speed. Bernoulli's equation can be used to approximate these parameters in water, air or any fluid that has very low viscosity. Young scholars learn about the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Shoes Under Pressure
Students explore the basic physics behind walking, and the design and engineering of shoes to accommodate different gaits. They are introduced to pressure, force and impulse as they relate to shoes, walking and running. Students learn...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Above Ground Storage Tanks in the Houston Ship Channel
Students are provided with an introduction to above-ground storage tanks, which sets the stage for the real-world engineering challenge presented in the associated activity- to design new and improved storage tanks that can survive storm...
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: Sliding Textbooks
In this culminating activity of the unit which highlights how forces play a role in engineering design and material choices, students explore and apply their knowledge of forces, friction, acceleration, and gravity in a two-part experiment.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Hearing: How Do Our Ears Work?
Students learn about the anatomy of the ear and how the ears work as a sound sensor. Ear anatomy parts and structures are explained in detail, as well as how sound is transmitted mechanically and then electrically through them to the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Understanding Movement in Humans and Robots
This activity helps students understand how a LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robot moves using motors and wheels. Then students relate the concepts of decision-making actuation and motion in humans to their parallels in mechanized robots, and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Viscous Fluids
Students are introduced to the similarities and differences in the behaviors of elastic solids and viscous fluids. Several types of fluid behaviors are described--Bingham plastic, Newtonian, shear thinning and shear thickening--along...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is Newton's Third Law?
Students are introduced to Newton's third law of motion, and then learn that engineers apply Newton's third law and an understanding of reaction forces when designing a wide range of creations, from rockets and aircraft to door knobs,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Archimedes' Principle, Pascal's Law and Bernoulli's Principle
Students are introduced to Pascal's law, Archimedes' principle, and Bernoulli's principle through problems and engineering applications.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Does Contact Area Matter?
Using the same method for measuring friction that was used in the previous lesson (Discovering Friction), students design and conduct an experiment to determine if the amount of area over which an object contacts a surface it is moving...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Move It!
Mechanical energy is the most easily understood form of energy for learners. When there is mechanical energy involved, something moves. Mechanical energy is a very important concept to understand. Engineers need to know what happens when...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Levers That Lift
This lesson plan introduces students to three of the six simple machines used by many engineers: the lever, the pulley, and the wheel-and-axle. In general, engineers use the lever to magnify the force applied to an object, the pulley to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Pulley'ing Your Own Weight
Using common materials (spools, string, soap), students learn how a pulley can be used to easily change the direction of a force, making the moving of large objects easier. They see the difference between fixed and movable pulleys, and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Launch Into Learning: Catapults!
Learners learn about catapults, including the science and math concepts behind them, as they prepare for the associated activity in which they design, build and test their own catapults. They learn about force, accuracy, precision and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Bombs Away!
In this hands-on activity students learn create a device to protect a dropped egg and deliver it close to a target. Students learn about engineering as well as potential and kinetic energy and energy transfer
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Swamp Cooler
Using a household fan, cardboard box and paper towels, student teams design and build an evaporative cooler (swamp cooler). They learn about the process that cools water during the evaporation of water. They make calculations to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Riding the Gravity Wave
Students write a biographical sketch of an artist or athlete who lives on the edge, riding the gravity wave, to better understand how these artists and athletes work with gravity and manage risk. Note: The literacy activities for the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Big Mo
Momentum is not only a physical principle; it is a psychological phenomenon. Students learn how the "Big Mo" of the bandwagon effect contributes to the development of fads and manias, and how modern technology and mass media accelerate...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Couch Potato or Inertia Victim?
Students design a simple behavioral survey, and learn basic protocol for primary research, survey design and report writing. Note: The literacy activities for the Mechanics unit are based on physical themes that have broad application to...