TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Population Growth in Yeasts
This lesson is the second of two that explore cellular respiration and population growth in yeasts. In the first lesson, students set up a simple way to indirectly observe and quantify the amount of respiration occurring in...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Complex Networks and Graphs
Students learn about complex networks and how to represent them using graphs. They also learn that graph theory is a useful mathematical tool for studying complex networks in diverse applications of science and engineering, such as...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Processes on Complex Networks
Building on their understanding of graphs, young scholars are introduced to random processes on networks. They walk through an illustrative example to see how a random process can be used to represent the spread of an infectious disease,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Evolution of Digital Organisms
Young scholars are introduced to the concepts of digital organisms and digital evolution. They learn about the research that digital evolution software makes possible, and compare and contrast it with biological evolution.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Introduction to Evolutionary Computation
Students are introduced to the concepts of evolution by natural selection and digital evolution software. They learn about the field of evolutionary computation, which applies the principles of natural selection to solve engineering...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Biosensors for Food Safety
How can you tell if harmful bacteria are in your food or water that might make you sick? What you eat or drink can be contaminated with bacteria, viruses, parasites and toxins pathogens that can be harmful or even fatal. Students learn...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Heart of Our Cardiovascular System
Students learn about the heart and its role at the center of the human cardiovascular system. In the associated activity, students play out a scenario in which they are biomedical engineers asked to design artificial hearts. They learn...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Pharmaceutical Research Design Problem
Through this lesson and its associated activity, students explore the role of biomedical engineers working for pharmaceutical companies. First, students gain background knowledge about what biomedical engineers do, how to become a...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Fluid Power Basics
Students learn about the basic fundamental concepts regarding fluid power, which includes both pneumatic, which utilize gas, and hydraulic, which utilize liquid, systems. Both systems contain four basic components: a reservoir, a pump or...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is Heat?
Students learn about the definition of heat as a form of energy and how it exists in everyday life. They also learn about the three types of heat transfer as well as the connection between heat and insulation.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is Newton's First Law?
Students are introduced to the concepts of force, inertia, and Newton's first law of motion: objects at rest stay at rest and objects in motion stay in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.This lesson is the first in a series...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is Newton's Second Law?
After a review of force, types of forces, and Newton's first law, students are introduced to Newton's second law of motion: force = mass x acceleration.
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: Blood Clots, Polymers and Strokes
Students are introduced to the circulatory system with an emphasis on the blood clotting process, including coagulation and the formation and degradation of polymers through their underlying atomic properties. They learn about the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Far Does a Lava Flow Go?
While learning about volcanoes, magma and lava flows, students learn about the properties of liquid movement, coming to understand viscosity and other factors that increase and decrease liquid flow. They also learn about lava composition...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Are Gears? What Do They Do?
Students are introduced to an important engineering element- the gear. This prepares them to apply this knowledge in four associated activities in order to create successful solutions to design challenges that use LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is a Program?
Using a few blindfolds and a simple taped floor maze exercise, young scholars come to understand that computers rely completely upon instructions given in programs and thus programs must be comprehensive and thorough. Then students learn...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Do You Make a Program Wait?
Building on the programming basics learned so far in a corresponding Robotics unit, students learn how to program using sensors rather than by specifying exact durations. Working with the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots and software, they...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Do You Make Loops and Switches?
Students learn how to program using loops and switches. Using the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots, sensors and software, student pairs perform three mini programming activities using loops and switches individually, and then combined.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is Bluetooth?
Students learn about electrical connections, how they work, and their pervasiveness in our world. Two specific skills explored are Morse code and the function of Bluetooth. Using bluetooth, they control LEGO robots remotely from Android...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Brain Is a Computer
Learners learn about the similarities between the human brain and its engineering counterpart, the computer. Since students work with computers routinely, this comparison strengthens their understanding of both how the brain works and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Human and Robot Sensors
Students are provided with a rigorous background in human "sensors" (including information on the main five senses, sensor anatomies, and nervous system process) and their engineering equivalents, setting the stage for three associated...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Reflecting on Human Reflexes
Young scholars learn about human reflexes, how our bodies react to stimuli and how some body reactions and movements are controlled automatically, without thinking consciously about the movement or responses. In the associated activity,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Are We Like Robots?
Students explore the similarities between how humans move and walk and how robots move, so they come to see the human body as a system from an engineering point-of-view. Movement results from decision making (deciding to walk and move)...