TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Levers That Lift
This lesson introduces students to three of the six simple machines used by many engineers: the lever, the pulley, and the wheel-and-axle. In general, engineers use the lever to magnify the force applied to an object, the pulley to lift...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Not So Simple
Students expand upon their understanding of simple machines with an introduction to compound machines. A compound machine - a combination of two or more simple machines - can affect work more than its individual components. Engineers who...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Solar Power
Students learn about solar energy and how to calculate the amount of solar energy available at a given location and time of day on Earth. The importance of determining incoming solar energy for solar devices is discussed.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Making Music
In this lesson, students learn about sound. Girls and boys are introduced to the concept of frequency and how it applies to musical sounds.
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Teach Engineering: To Absorb or Reflect, That Is the Question
This is the last of five sound lessons, and it introduces acoustics as the science of studying and controlling sound. Students learn how different materials reflect and absorb sound.
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Teach Engineering: Pictures Please: Traveling Light
In this activity, students learn that light travels in a straight line from a light source and that ray diagrams help us understand how an image will be created by a lens. In the accompanying activity, students explore the concepts...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Space Travel
Students are introduced to the historical motivation for space exploration. They learn about the International Space Station as an example of space travel innovation and are introduced to new and futuristic ideas that space engineers are...
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Teach Engineering: Life on the Moon
Students learn about the physical properties of the Moon. They compare these to the properties of the Earth to determine how life would be different for people living on the Moon. Using their understanding of these differences, they...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Asteroids
Students learn some basic facts about asteroids in our solar system, mainly about the size of asteroids and how that relates to the potential danger of an asteroid colliding with the Earth. Students are briefly introduced to the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Our Amazing, Powerful Sun
Students are introduced to the Sun by exploring various aspects of it, including its composition, interior workings, and relationship to the Earth.
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Teach Engineering: Abdominal Cavity and Laparoscopic Surgery
For students interested in studying biomechanical engineering, especially in the field of surgery, this activity serves as an anatomy and physiology primer of the abdominopelvic cavity. Students are introduced to the abdominopelvic...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Mechanics of Elastic Solids
After conducting the associated activity, students are introduced to the material behavior of elastic solids. Engineering stress and strain are defined and their importance in designing devices and systems is explained. How engineers...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Viscous Fluids
Students are introduced to the similarities and differences in the behaviors of elastic solids and viscous fluids. Several types of fluid behaviors are described--Bingham plastic, Newtonian, shear thinning and shear thickening--along...
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Teach Engineering: Viscoelasticity
Students are introduced to the concept of viscoelasticity and some of the material behaviors of viscoelastic materials, including strain rate dependence, stress relaxation, creep, hysteresis and preconditioning. Viscoelastic material...
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Teach Engineering: Tissue Mechanics
Students reflect on their experiences making silly putty (the previous hands-on activity in the unit), especially why changing the borax concentration alters the mechanical properties of silly putty and how this pertains to tissue...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Triangles & Trusses
Students learn about the fundamental strength of different shapes, illustrating why structural engineers continue to use the triangle as the structural shape of choice. Examples from everyday life are introduced to show how this shape is...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Test and Treat Before You Drink
Learners learn about water quality testing and basic water treatment processes and technology options. Biological, physical and chemical treatment processes are addressed, as well as physical and biological water quality testing,...
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Teach Engineering: Watershed Balance
This lesson teaches the concept of a watershed and why it is important in the context of engineering hydrology. Students learn about runoff and how we visualize runoff in the form of hydrographs.
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Teach Engineering: Hurricanes
Students learn what causes hurricanes and what engineers do to help protect people from destruction caused by hurricane winds and rain. Research and data collection vessels allow for scientists and engineers to model and predict weather...
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Teach Engineering: Global Climate Change
Middle schoolers learn how the greenhouse effect is related to global warming and how global warming impacts our planet, including global climate change. Extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and how we react to these changes are...
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Teach Engineering: What Kind of Footprint? Carbon Footprint
Students determine their carbon footprints by answering questions about their everyday lifestyle choices. Then they engineer plans to reduce them. Students learn about their personal impacts on global climate change and how they can help...
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Teach Engineering: Boxed in and Wrapped Up
Students find the volume and surface area of a rectangular box (e.g., a cereal box), and then figure out how to convert that box into a new, cubical box having the same volume as the original. As they construct the new, cube-shaped box...
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Teach Engineering: Caught in the Net
Bycatch can be defined as the act of unintentionally catching certain living creatures using fishing gear. A bycatched species is distinguished from a target species (the animal the gear is intended to catch) because it is not sold or...
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Teach Engineering: Sound for Sight
Echolocation is the ability to orient by transmitting sound and receiving echoes from objects in the environment. As a result of a Marco-Polo type activity and subsequent instructional activity, students learn basic concepts of...