TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Earthquakes Living Lab: The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake
Students examine the effects of geology on earthquake magnitudes and how engineers anticipate and prepare for these effects. They look in-depth at the historical 1906 San Francisco earthquake and compare it to the Kobe, Japan earthquake,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Renewable Energy Living Lab: Smart Solar
Students use real-world data to evaluate whether solar power is a viable energy alternative for several cities in different parts of the U.S. Working in small groups, they examine maps and make calculations using NREL/US DOE data from...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: A Recipe for Air
Students use M&M's to create a pie graph that expresses their understanding of the composition of air. The students discuss why knowing this information is important to engineers.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Air Is It Really There?
By watching and performing several simple experiments, students develop an understanding of the properties of air: it has mass, it takes up space, it can move, it exerts pressure, it can do work.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: For Your Eyes Only
Students develop their understanding of visible air pollutants with an incomplete combustion demonstration, a "smog in a jar" demonstration, and by building simple particulate matter collectors.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Green Marketing
Students learn basic marketing concepts and use professional marketing techniques to compose an advertisement for a hybrid vehicle. In the process, they learn the principles of comparative analysis.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What's Hiding in the Air?
Students develop an understanding of the effects of invisible air pollutants with a rubber band and hanger air test and a bean plant experiment. They also learn about methods of reducing invisible air pollutants.
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Teach Engineering: Tears in Rain
The goal of this activity is for students to develop visual literacy. They learn how images are manipulated for a powerful effect and how a photograph can make the invisible (pollutants that form acid rain) visible (through the damage...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: I Can't Take the Pressure!
Students develop an understanding of air pressure by using candy or cookie wafers to model how it changes with altitude, by comparing its magnitude to gravitational force per unit area, and by observing its magnitude with an aluminum can...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Dripping Wet or Dry as a Bone?
Students use a sponge and water model to explore the concept of relative humidity and create a percent scale.
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Teach Engineering: Turning the Air Upside Down
Students develop their understanding of air convection currents and temperature inversions by constructing and observing simple models.
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Teach Engineering: Take Their Word for It!
Students learn how scientific terms are formed using Latin and Greek roots, prefixes and suffixes, and on that basis, learn to make an educated guess about the meaning of a word. Students are introduced to the role played by metaphor in...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Moving Without Wheels
In a class demonstration, students observe a simple water cycle model to better understand its role in pollutant transport. This activity shows one way in which pollution is affected by the water cycle; it simulates a point source of...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Acid (And Base) Rainbows
Students are introduced to the differences between acids and bases and how to use indicators, such as pH paper and red cabbage juice, to distinguish between them.
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Teach Engineering: Is That Legal? A Case of Acid Rain
The goal of this activity is to understand how techniques of persuasion (including background, supporting evidence, storytelling and the call to action) are used to develop an argument for or against a topic. Students develop an...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Hot Stuff!
Students observe demonstrations, and build and evaluate simple models to understand the greenhouse effect and the role of increased greenhouse gas concentration in global warming.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Battling for Oxygen
Using gumdrops and toothpicks, students conduct a large-group, interactive ozone depletion model. Students explore the dynamic and competing upper atmospheric roles of the protective ozone layer, the sun's UV radiation and harmful...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Metamorphosis Stories of Change
The goal of this activity is for students to learn how to tell a story in order to make a complex topic (such as global warming or ozone holes) easier for a reader to grasp. Students realize that the narrative impulse underlies even...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Washing Air
Students observe and discuss a simple model of a wet scrubber to understand how this pollutant recovery method functions in cleaning industrial air pollution.
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Teach Engineering: Engineering Pop Ups
Students learn about applied forces as they create pop-up-books - the art of paper engineering. They also learn the basic steps of the engineering design process.
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Teach Engineering: A Shot Under Pressure
Students use their understanding of projectile physics and fluid dynamics to find the water pressure in water guns. By measuring the range of the water jets, they are able to calculate the theoretical pressure. Students create graphs to...
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Teach Engineering: Population Density: How Much Space Do You Have?
Students learn about population density within environments and ecosystems. They determine the density of a population and think about why population density and distribution information is useful to engineers for city planning and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Biodomes Engineering Design Project: Lessons 2 6
In this lesson students learn about biodomesand how engineers use them. Students then create their own biodomes.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Plant Cycles: Photosynthesis & Transpiration
What do plants need? Students examine the effects of light and air on green plants, learning the processes of photosynthesis and transpiration. Student teams plant seeds, placing some in sunlight and others in darkness. They make...