In this challenge, students will transfer rotational motion into linear motion by building a simple machine. The site also includes tips, a lesson plan, and a place for students to document their engineering design process.

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...

Simple machines are devices with few or no moving parts that make work easier, and which people have used to provide mechanical advantage for thousands of years. Students learn about the wedge, wheel and axle, lever, inclined plane,...

Create a simple machine that transfers a rotational motion into linear vertical motion with this challenge. The site gives more details on the challenge as well as tips and place to document your design process. Teachers can find a...

This website challenges students to make a simple machine out of a straw to mimic the movement of joints in your body. The website includes a lesson plan, tips, and a place for students to document their design process.

Students will have completed a unit on the six simple machines (lever, inclined plane, pulley, wedge, screw, and wheel and axle) before beginning this project. Students will choose to investigate an invention composed of one or more...

Build a robotic face that can make facial expressions using simple machines on this website. This website includes the challenge, tips, a lesson plan, and a place for students to document their engineering design process.

In this two-part activity, students design and build a Rube Goldberg machine. The open ended problem uses the engineering design process and can have a preset purpose, such as rolling a marble into a cup from a distance, or can be left...

Step-by-step illustrated instructions for an experiment investigating how a lever works. An explanation of the science involved is given at the end.

An MIT engineering professor offers a fun presentation on simple machines, specifically the geometry involved in building them. Students will learn about kinematics ("geometry in motion") and build their own simple machines with a...

By the end of this project, students will be familiar with the 6 different simple machines and will be able to identify how these machines are used in products and tools they use on a daily basis. They will investigate how mechanical...

Powered by the wind watch your boat move through the water. This challenge has students making a boat using simple household materials. The website also includes tips, a lesson plan, and a place for students to document their engineering...

Students will have completed a unit of forces and motion prior to the current unit of study on simple machines (lever, inclined plane, screw, wedge, pulley, wheel and axle). Students will review the functions and examples of simple...

This website contains a challenge for students to build a simple circuit that enables you to turn on a small LED. The website includes a lesson plan, tips, and a place for students to document their design challenge.

Students learn about the mechanical advantage offered by pulleys in an interactive and game-like manner. By virtue of the activity's mechatronic presentation, they learn to study a mechanical system not as a static image, but rather as a...

Simple machines allow us to do difficult tasks like lifting objects heavier than our body weight. In this science project you'll build a tabletop lever and measure how much effort it takes to lift an object by altering the length of the...

If you put on clothes that were washed in a washing machine, rode in a car, ate food from a fridge, warmed up lunch in a microwave, or played a video game, you used an electric motor. Try this science fair project and you'll learn how to...

[Free Registration/Login Required] An informational text about simple machines people use every day. A question sheet is available to help students build skills in reading comprehension.

[Free Registration/Login Required] An informational text about simple machines used in daily life such as: a pulley, a screw, an inclined plane, a wheel and axle, a wedge, and a lever. A question sheet is available to help students build...

For this interactive building experience, students will design and construct a complex machine to do a fairly simple task. Students will calculate several kinetic quantities of different parts of their machine. Students will create an...

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...

In this activity, students reinforce their understanding of compound machines by building a catapult. This compound machine consists of a lever and a wheel-and-axel. Catapults have been designed by engineers for a variety of purposes -...

Can you build a crane that uses simple machines and mechanical advantage to move heavy objects? This website contains a challenge, tips, a lesson plan, and a place for students to document their engineering design process.

Students learn how simple machines, including wedges, were used in building both ancient pyramids and present-day skyscrapers. In a hands-on activity, students test a variety of wedges on different materials (wax, soap, clay, foam)....