TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Foucault Pendulum
Students learn about the Foucault pendulum, an engineering tool used to demonstrate and measure the Earth's rotation. Student groups then create small experimental versions, each comprised of a pendulum and a video camera mounted on a...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Does an Ultrasonic Sensor Work?
Students learn how ultrasonic sensors work, reinforcing the connection between this sensor and how humans, bats, and dolphins estimate distance.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is Engineering? What Is Design?
An overview of engineering and design which introduces the students to the basic steps of the engineering design process. This lesson challenges students to plan a picnic for their friends by considering its various components as they go...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Timing a Speedbot!
Students strengthen their communication skills by first learning the meaning of base units and derived units. Then, working in groups, students measure the time for LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots and calculate the robots' average speeds at...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Biorecycling: Using Nature to Make Resources From Waste
By studying key processes in the carbon cycle, such as photosynthesis, composting, and anaerobic digestion, students learn how nature and engineers biorecycle carbon.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Android Pendulums
Students investigate the motion of a simple pendulum through direct observation and data collection using Android devices and the AccelDataCapture app.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Into the Swing of Things
Young scholars learn the basic properties of periodic and harmonic motion, and how the rearrangement of the simple pendulum equation can be used to solve for gravitational acceleration, pendulum length, and gravity. At lesson end,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Fossil Fondue
To understand how fossils are formed, students model the process of fossilization by making fossils using small toy figures and melted chocolate. They extend their knowledge to the many ways that engineers aid in the study of fossils,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: A Simple Solution for the Circus
In this activity, students are challenged to design a contraption using simple machines to move a circus elephant into a rail car. After students consider their audience and constraints, they work in groups to brainstorm ideas and select...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Modern Day Pyramids
Students investigate the ways in which ancient technologies - six types of simple machines and combinations - are used to construct modern buildings. As they work together to solve a design problem (designing and building a modern...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Claw
Students learn about gear ratios and power by operating toy mechanical cranes of differing gear ratios. They attempt to pick up objects with various masses to witness how much power must be applied to the system to oppose the force of...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Slinkies as Solenoids
In this activity, students use an old fashion children's toy, a metal slinky, to mimic and understand the magnetic field generated in an MRI machine. The metal slinky mimics the magnetic field of a solenoid, which forms the basis for the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Rock Cycle
Through five lessons, students are introduced to all facets of the rock cycle. Topics include rock and mineral types, material stresses and weathering, geologic time and fossil formation, the Earth's crust and tectonic plates, and soil...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Simple Machines
Through a five-lesson series with five hands-on activities, students are introduced to six simple machines - inclined plane, wedge, screw, lever, pulley, wheel-and-axle - as well as compound machines, which are combinations of two or...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Runaway Train: Investigating Speed With Photo Gates
Students conduct an experiment to determine the relationship between the speed of a wooden toy car at the bottom of an incline and the height at which it is released. They observe how the photogate-based speedometer instrument "clocks"...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Intro to Engineering
Students are introduced to the basic principles behind engineering and the types of engineering while learning about a popular topic - the Olympics. The involvement of engineering in modern sports is amazing and pervasive. Students learn...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Shapes of Strength
Students are introduced to brainstorming and the design process in problem solving as it relates to engineering. They perform an activity to develop and understand problem solving with an emphasis on learning from history. Using only...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Requirements & Constraints: Making Model Parking Garages
The difference between an architect and an engineer is sometimes confusing because their roles in building design can be similar. Students experience a bit of both professions by following a set of requirements and meeting given...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Build a Toy Workshop
Working as if they are engineers who work for (the hypothetical) Build-a-Toy Workshop company, students apply their imaginations and the engineering design process to design and build prototype toys with moving parts. They set up...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Engineering in Reverse!
Students learn about the process of reverse engineering and how this technique is used to improve upon technology. Students analyze push-toys and draw diagrams of the predicted mechanisms inside the toys. Then, they disassemble the toys...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Power Your House With Wind
Students learn how engineers harness the energy of the wind to produce power by following the engineering design process as they prototype two types of wind turbines and test to see which works best. Students also learn how engineers...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Energy of Motion
By taking a look at the energy of motion all around us, students learn about the types of energy and their characteristics. They first learn about the two simplest forms of mechanical energy: kinetic and potential energy, as illustrated...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Mixtures and Solutions
This unit covers introductory concepts of mixtures and solutions. Students think about how mixtures and solutions, and atoms and molecules can influence new technologies developed by engineers. The first lesson explores the fundamentals...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Earthquakes Living Lab: The Theory of Plate Tectonics
Working in pairs, students think like engineers and connect what they understand about the theory of plate tectonics to the design of structures for earthquake-resistance.