TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Bacteria Are Everywhere!
Through this activity, students are introduced to the concept of engineering biological organisms and studying their growth to be able to identify periods of fast and slow growth. Students learn that bacteria are found everywhere,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Newton's Law of Cooling
Middle schoolers come to see the exponential trend demonstrated through the changing temperatures measured while heating and cooling a beaker of water. This task is accomplished by first appealing to students' real-life heating and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Simulating the Bug
Students modify a provided App Inventor code to design their own diseases. This serves as the evolution step in the software/systems design process. The activity is essentially a mini design cycle in which students are challenged to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Testing the Edges
Students gain experience using the software/systems (engineering) design process, specifically focusing on the testing phase. This problem-based learning activity uses the design process to solve open-ended challenges. In addition to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Battle of the Beams
Students explore the properties of composites using inexpensive materials and processing techniques. They create beams using Laffy Taffy and water, and a choice of various reinforcements (pasta, rice, candies) and fabricating...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Designing a Winning Guest Village in the Saguaro National Park
The Challenge Question of the Legacy Cycle draws the student into considering the engineering ingenuity of nature. It will force him to analyze, appreciate and understand the wisdom of these designs as the student team focuses on meeting...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Learning Imaging Techniques!
During this activity, students will be introduced to the concepts of the challenge. They will generate ideas for solving the grand challenge first independently, then in small groups. Finally, as a class, students will compile their...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Building an Electromagnet
Students design and construct an electromagnet that must pick up 10 staples. They begin with only minimal guidance, and after the basic concept is understood, are informed of the properties that affect the strength of that magnet. They...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Making Model Microfluidic Devices Using Jell O
Students create large-scale models of microfluidic devices using a process similar to that of the PDMS and plasma bonding that is used in the creation of lab-on-a-chip devices. They use disposable foam plates, plastic bendable straws and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Cell Membrane Experimental Design
The final activity of this unit, which integrates the Keepers of the Gate unit through the Go Public challenge, involves students taking part in experimental design. They design a lab that answers the challenge question: "You are...
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...
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Teach Engineering: Lifter (Ehd Thrusters)
Students teams each assemble a wing component of a lifter with the goal to test the lifter wing and measure the force exerted when high voltage is applied to it. After an introduction to torque and its use to measure force, students...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Students as Scientists
This curricular unit contains two lessons that let students actually do the work of scientists as they design their own experiments to answer questions they generate. In the first lesson and its associated activity, students conduct a...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Digital Mapping and Geographic Information Systems (Gis)
Geographic information systems (GIS), once used predominantly by experts in cartography and computer programming, have become pervasive in everyday business and consumer use. This unit explores GIS in general as a technology about which...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Engineering Out of Harry Situations
Under the "The Science Behind Harry Potter" theme, a succession of diverse complex scientific topics are presented to students through direct immersive interaction. Student interest is piqued by the incorporation of popular culture into...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Implementing Biomimicry and Sustainable Design
This unit provides students with an opportunity to study ecological relationships with an emphasis on the Sonoran Desert. Students appreciate the complexity and balance that supports the exchange of energy and matter within food webs....
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Teach Engineering: The Three Color Mystery
Young scholars are introduced to an engineering challenge in which they are given a job assignment to separate three types of apples. However, they are unable to see the color differences between the apples, and as a result, they must...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Where's the Water?
In this instructional activity, the students will conduct an investigation to purify water. Students will engineer a method for cleaning water, discover the most effective way to filter water, and practice conducting a scientific...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: All About Water!
Students learn about the differences between types of water (surface and ground), as well as the differences between streams, rivers and lakes. Then, they learn about dissolved organic matter (DOM), and the role it plays in identifying...
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Teach Engineering: Human Water Cycle
Learners learn about the human water cycle, or how humans impact the water cycle by settling down in civilizations. Specifically, they learn how people obtain, use and dispose of water. Students also learn about shortages of treated,...
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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: Engineering Brainstorming
Students act as an engineering consulting firm with the task to design and sell their idea for a new vehicle power system. During the brainstorming activity (Generate Ideas), students determine and comprehend what type of information is...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Digest Your Food!
In a multi-week experiment, student teams gather biogas data from the mini-anaerobic digesters that they build to break down different types of food waste with microbes. They compare methane gas production from decomposing hot dogs,...
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Teach Engineering: Highlighting the Neuron
In this lesson on the brain's neural networks, students investigate the structure and function of the neuron. They discover ways in which engineers apply this knowledge to the development of devices that can activate neurons. Includes...