Teach Engineering
Identifying Possible Underground Cavern Locations
Teams continue with the Asteroid Impact challenge and determine possible locations to construct their underground shelters. Participants cut scale area models of their shelters from paper and place them on the map to find locations...
Teach Engineering
Building and Testing Model Underground Safety Caverns
Teams take their cavern designs and build a model from clay or paper mache that can be buried in sand. Testing involves dropping a bowling ball on the buried cavern. Teams dig out their cavern, inspect it for damage, and consider...
Teach Engineering
Ranking the Rocks for Desired Properties
Math rocks! Cavern design teams determine the rankings of rock types based upon desirability points. The points are connected to the properties of the rocks and their usefulness in building a cavern.
Teach Engineering
Incoming Asteroid! What's the Problem?
Oh, no! An asteroid is on a collision course with Earth!. Class members must rise to the challenge of designing a shelter that will protect people from the impact and permit them to live in this shelter for one year. In this first lesson...
Teach Engineering
How Big? Necessary Area and Volume for Shelter
Teams must determine the size of cavern needed to house the citizens of Alabraska to protect them from the asteroid impact. Using scaling properties, teams first determining the number of people that could sleep in a classroom and then...
Curated OER
Cavern Geology: Speleothem Construction
Young scholars discover how underground rock formations grow. They perform various activities based on grade level.
Curated OER
TE Activity: Testing the Caverns
Middle schoolers make model caverns out of paper mache or clay. They bury them in a tray of sand, and test the models by dropping balls into them simulating as asteroid hitting the earth. They discuss the results of the activity in a...
Curated OER
Create a Cavern
Students make a classroom cave using chairs, desks, and sheets to create a meandering path. They explore safety steps for spelunking exploration.
Curated OER
Cavern Life: The Food Web
Students explain the importance of elements on a food web. They realize that without light there can be no life. They perform various activities based on grade level.
Curated OER
Where is Oil Found?
Students determine that crude oil is found in porous rocks (reservoirs) rather than in caves or caverns.
Curated OER
What Is A Cave?
Students explore their existing concepts of caves and match them with a working definition to use during the unit. They name the two types of rock formations in which most American caves occur, and define "show cave" and "wild cave."
Curated OER
Water Creates a Cave
Students study the role of water in limestone cave formation and create a cave on karst-like grid on paper.
Curated OER
Kamchatka: Just Gushing with Geysers!
Students explore geysers. They identify the parts of the geyser and how it works. Students create a working model of a geyser. They write a brief summary about their geyser.
Curated OER
Dwarves, Elves, Goblins, and Trolls Cloze Activity
In this dwarves, elves, goblins, and trolls cloze activity worksheet, students read a 4 paragraph selection and fill in the blanks in the piece with words from the provided word bank.
Curated OER
Dark and Beautiful Caves
Students research how caves form. They describe the major stone formations in caves by taking notes. They construct a clay model of a cave and mark each formation making it easy to identify in the legend.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Asteroid Impact
Asteroid Impact is an 8-10 class long (350-450 min) earth science curricular unit where student teams are posed with the scenario that an asteroid will impact earth. They must design the location and size of underground caverns to save...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Scaling the Map
Students learn how to determine map distances and areas using the map scale. They get a feel for how much an area represents on the map in relation to the size they are suggesting for their underground caverns to shelter the Alabraska...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Possible Locations
Students use their knowledge of scales and areas to determine the best locations in Alabraska for the underground caverns. They cut out rectangular paper pieces to represent caverns to scale with the maps and place the cut-outs on the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Drum Roll Please
Student teams commit to a final decision on the location they recommend for safe underground cavern shelter for the citizens of Alabraska. They prepare and deliver final presentations to defend their final decisions to the class.