Unit Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Teaching the Engineering Design Process

For Teachers 6th - 8th
Students follow the steps of the engineering design process (EDP) while learning about assistive devices and biomedical engineering. They first go through a design-build-test activity to learn the steps of the cyclical engineering design...
Lesson Plan
American Chemical Society

Middle School Chemistry: Chemical Reactions & Engineering Design

For Teachers 9th - 10th
This lesson begins with a story about rescuing reptile eggs from a new construction site. Using the story as motivation, students are presented with an engineering design challenge: Build a portable device which can warm, support, and...
Unit Plan
REMC Association of Michigan

Remc Association of Michigan: 21 Things4 Students: 15. Design Thinking

For Students 3rd - 8th
Design Thinking is a process for designing something to solve a problem. It shares a lot of similarities to the Engineering Design Process you might learn in a STEM class and the Scientific Method you learn in science. However, it tends...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Off Road Wheelchair Challenge

For Teachers 6th - 8th
Students further their understanding of the engineering design process (EDP) while being introduced to assistive technology devices and biomedical engineering. They are given a fictional client statement and are tasked to follow the...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Portable Wheelchair Ramp Challenge

For Teachers 6th - 8th
Students follow the steps of the engineering design process while learning more about assistive devices and biomedical engineering applied to basic structural engineering concepts. Their engineering challenge is to design, build and test...
Lesson Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Hidden in Plain Sight

For Teachers 9th - 10th
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,...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Cleaning the Air

For Teachers 6th - 8th
Engineers design methods of removing particulate matter from industrial sources to minimize negative effects of air pollution. In this activity, students will undertake a similar engineering challenge as they design and build a filter to...
Lesson Plan
Science Education Resource Center at Carleton College

Serc: Design a Paper Car: Exploring the Scientific Method

For Teachers 9th - 10th
An engineering design project used to help young scholars practice teamwork and to give them an opportunity to experience engineering practices, such as teamwork and problem-solving.
Lesson Plan
TryEngineering

Try Engineering: Cast Your Vote

For Teachers 3rd - 8th
Young scholars learn about the engineering design process as they design, build, test, and evaluate a voting system made with everyday materials. The objective of the lesson is to learn how engineering has changed methods of voting over...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Sticks and Stones Will Break That Bone!

For Teachers 6th - 8th
Students learn about the strength of bones and methods of helping to mend fractured bones. During a class demonstration, a chicken bone is broken by applying a load until it reaches a point of failure (fracture). Then, working as...
Unit Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Students as Scientists

For Teachers 6th - 9th
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...
Lesson Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Do You See What I See?

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Young scholars research OCR and OCR techniques and then apply those methods to the design challenge by developing algorithms capable of correctly reading a number on a typical high school sports scoreboard.
Lesson Plan
TryEngineering

Try Engineering: Biomimicry in Engineering

For Teachers 9th - 10th
This activity focuses on the concept of Biomimicry and students learn how engineers have incorporated structures and methods from the living world in products and solutions for all industries. Students then work in teams to develop a...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Testing With J Unit

For Teachers 9th - 10th
JUnit is a testing method that is included with NetBeans (Java) installs or can be downloaded from the web and included in the Java build. In this activity, students design tests for a provided Java class before the class methods are...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Oil on the Ocean

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Students learn about oil spills and their environmental and economic effects. They experience the steps of the engineering design process as they brainstorm potential methods for oil spill clean-up, and then design, build, and re-design...
Unit Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Exploring Solar Power

For Teachers 6th - 8th
This unit provides students the opportunity to explore methods engineers have devised for harnessing sunlight to generate power. Students will initially explore heat transfer and heat storage through the construction, testing, and...
Lesson Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Landfills: Building Them Better

For Teachers 5th - 8th
Waste disposal has been an ongoing problem since medieval times. Environmental engineers are employed to develop technologies to dispose of the enormous amount of trash produced in the United States. In this lesson, students will learn...
Interactive
Smithsonian Institution

National Air and Space Museum: Wright Brothers: Engineering the Wright Way

For Students 5th - 8th
Great interactive provides students with an opportunity to use engineering skills to design and test airplane wings based on the methods of the Wright brothers. Step into the workshop and design a set of wings that will fly your glider...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Penny Perfect Properties (Solid Liquid Interactions)

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Students investigate the property dependence between liquid and solid interfaces and determine observable differences in how liquids react to different solid surfaces. They compare copper pennies and plastic "coins" as the two test...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Daylighting Design

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Students explore the many different ways that engineers provide natural lighting to interior spaces. They analyze various methods of daylighting by constructing model houses from foam core board and simulating the sun with a desk lamp....
Unit Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Clean Up This Mess

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Students are challenged to design a method for separating steel from aluminum based on magnetic properties as is frequently done in recycling operations. To complicate the challenge, the magnet used to separate the steel must be able to...
Unit Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Air Pollution

For Teachers 4th - 6th
Students are introduced to the concept of air quality by investigating the composition, properties, atmospheric layers and everyday importance of air. They explore the sources and effects of visible and invisible air pollution. By...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Heave Ho!

For Teachers Pre-K - 1st
Students will discover the scientific basis for the use of inclined planes. They will explore, using a spring scale, a bag of rocks and an inclined plane, how dragging objects up a slope is easier than lifting them straight up into the...
Lesson Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Earthquakes Rock!

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Students learn the two main methods to measure earthquakes, the Richter Scale and the Mercalli Scale. They make a model of a seismograph - a measuring device that records an earthquake on a seismogram. Students also investigate which...