TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is Newton's First Law?
Students are introduced to the concepts of force, inertia, and Newton's first law of motion: objects at rest stay at rest and objects in motion stay in motion unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.This lesson is the first in a series...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is Newton's Second Law?
After a review of force, types of forces, and Newton's first law, students are introduced to Newton's second law of motion: force = mass x acceleration.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is Newton's Third Law?
Students are introduced to Newton's third law of motion, and then learn that engineers apply Newton's third law and an understanding of reaction forces when designing a wide range of creations, from rockets and aircraft to door knobs,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Blood Clots, Polymers and Strokes
Students are introduced to the circulatory system with an emphasis on the blood clotting process, including coagulation and the formation and degradation of polymers through their underlying atomic properties. They learn about the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Far Does a Lava Flow Go?
While learning about volcanoes, magma and lava flows, students learn about the properties of liquid movement, coming to understand viscosity and other factors that increase and decrease liquid flow. They also learn about lava composition...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Are Gears? What Do They Do?
Students are introduced to an important engineering element- the gear. This prepares them to apply this knowledge in four associated activities in order to create successful solutions to design challenges that use LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is a Program?
Using a few blindfolds and a simple taped floor maze exercise, students come to understand that computers rely completely upon instructions given in programs and thus programs must be comprehensive and thorough. Then students learn to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Do You Make a Program Wait?
Building on the programming basics learned so far in a corresponding Robotics unit, young scholars learn how to program using sensors rather than by specifying exact durations. Working with the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots and software,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Do You Make Loops and Switches?
Students learn how to program using loops and switches. Using the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots, sensors and software, student pairs perform three mini programming activities using loops and switches individually, and then combined.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is Bluetooth?
Students learn about electrical connections, how they work, and their pervasiveness in our world. Two specific skills explored are Morse code and the function of Bluetooth. Using bluetooth, they control LEGO robots remotely from Android...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Brain Is a Computer
Students learn about the similarities between the human brain and its engineering counterpart, the computer. Since students work with computers routinely, this comparison strengthens their understanding of both how the brain works and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Human and Robot Sensors
Students are provided with a rigorous background in human "sensors" (including information on the main five senses, sensor anatomies, and nervous system process) and their engineering equivalents, setting the stage for three associated...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Reflecting on Human Reflexes
Students learn about human reflexes, how our bodies react to stimuli and how some body reactions and movements are controlled automatically, without thinking consciously about the movement or responses. In the associated activity,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Are We Like Robots?
Students explore the similarities between how humans move and walk and how robots move, so they come to see the human body as a system from an engineering point-of-view. Movement results from decision making (deciding to walk and move)...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is a Robot?
This lesson introduces students to the major characteristics of robots. The associated activity uses the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT system as an example. Before studying robots in more detail, it is important for students to consider the many...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Does a Robot Work?
This lesson introduces electricity, batteries and motors using a LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robot. The associated activity guides students to build a simple LEGO NXT set-up and see the practical implementation of the concepts discussed. Before...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Do Human Sensors Work?
This lesson highlights the similarities between human sensors and their engineering counterparts. Taking this approach enables students to view the human body as a system, that is, from the perspective of an engineer. Humans have...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is a Sensor?
Students gain a rigorous background in the primary human sensors, as preparation for comparing them to some electronic equivalents in the associated activity.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is a Motor? How Does a Rotation Sensor Work?
Students learn about electric motors and rotational sensors. They create a basic program using the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT interface to control a motor to move a small robot.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Does a Touch Sensor Work?
Students look at human senses and their electronic imitators, with special focus on the skin and touch sensors. They have a chance to handle and get familiar with the LEGO touch sensor, including programming LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Does a Sound Sensor Work?
Learners learn about how sound sensors work, reinforcing their similarities to the human sense of hearing. This lesson and its associated activity enable students to appreciate how robots can take sensor input and use it to make...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Does a Light Sensor Work?
A mini-activity, which uses LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT intelligent bricks and light sensors gives young scholars a chance to investigate how light sensors function in preparation for the associated activity involving the light sensors and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Storing Android Accelerometer Data: App Design
Young scholars work through an online tutorial on MIT's App Inventor to learn how to create Android applications. Using those skills, they create their own applications and use them to collect data from an Android device accelerometer...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Android Acceleration
Young scholars prepare for the associated activity in which they investigate acceleration by collecting acceleration vs. time data using the accelerometer of a sliding Android device. Based on the experimental set-up for the activity,...