TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Keepers of the Gate Challenge
Students are presented with a real-life problem as a challenge to investigate, research and solve. Specifically, they are asked to investigate why salt water helps a sore throat, and how engineers apply this understanding to solve other...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Cell Membrane Structure and Function
Young scholars learn about the different structures that comprise cell membranes, fulfilling part of the Research and Revise stages of the legacy cycle. Students view online animations of cell membrane dynamics (links provided). Then...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Grand Challenge
This lesson introduces the MRI Safety Grand Challenge question. Students are asked to write journal responses to the question and brainstorm what information they will need to answer the question. The ideas are shared with the class and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Magnetic Resonance Imaging
This lesson ties the preceding lessons together and brings students back to the grand challenge question on MRI safety. During this lesson, students focus on the logistics of magnetic resonance imaging as well as the MRI hardware....
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: May the Magnetic Force Be With You
This lesson begins with a demonstration of the deflection of an electron beam. Students then review their knowledge of the cross product and the right hand rule with sample problems. After which, students study the magnetic force on a...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Thrown for a Loop
In this lesson, students begin to focus on the torque associated with a current carrying loop in a magnetic field. Students are prompted with example problems and use diagrams to visualize the vector product. In addition, students learn...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Both Fields at Once?!
This lesson discusses the result of a charge being subject to both electric and magnetic fields at the same time. It covers the Hall effect, velocity selector, and the charge to mass ratio. Given several sample problems, students learn...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Biot Savart Law
This instructional activity begins with a demonstration prompting students to consider how current generates a magnetic field and the direction of the field that is generated. Through formal lecture, students learn Biot-Savart's law in...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Solenoids
This lesson discusses solenoids. Students learn how to calculate the magnetic field along the axis of a solenoid and complete an activity exploring the magnetic field of a metal slinky. Solenoids form the basis for the magnet of an MRI....
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Ampere's Law
The lesson begins with a demonstration introducing learners to the force between two current carrying loops, comparing the attraction and repulsion between the loops to that between two magnets. After formal lecture on Ampere's law,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Changing Fields
This instructional activity begins with an activity in which students induce EMF in a coil of wire using magnetic fields. Then, demonstrations on Eddy currents show how a magnetic field can slow magnets just as Eddy currents are used to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Magnetic Fields Matter
This lesson introduces students to the effects of magnetic fields in matter addressing permanent magnets, diamagnetism, paramagnetism, ferromagnetism, and magnetization. First students must compare the magnetic field of a solenoid to the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Tell Me Doc, Will I Get Cancer?
Students are introduced to the challenge called, Tell Me the Odds, discovering a new way to assess a person's risk of breast cancer. Solving this challenge requires knowledge of refraction and the properties of light.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Does Light See?
Students are introduced to the concept of refraction. After making sure they understand the concepts of diffraction and interference, students work collaboratively to explain optical phenomena that cannot be accounted for via these two...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Quantifying Refraction
Young scholars learn the relevant equations for refraction (index of refraction and Snell's law) and how to use them to predict the behavior of light waves in specified scenarios.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: See the Genes
Through this concluding activity and its associated activity, students experience one valuable and often overlooked skill of successful scientists and engineers- communicating work and ideas. Students create posters depicting their...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Grand Challenge: Simulating Human Vision
Students are introduced to the Robotics Peripheral Vision Grand Challenge question. They are asked to write journal responses to the question and brainstorm what information they require to answer the question. Their ideas are shared...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Makes Up a Color?
As a part of the research and revise step of the Legacy Cycle, this lesson provides students with information they will need later on to be able to average pixels to simulate blurring in the peripheral plane of vision. Students learn why...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: How Do You Store All This Data?
During this lesson, students start to see the data structure they will use to store their images, towards finding a solution to this unit's Grand Challenge. Students are introduced to two-dimensional arrays and vector classes. Then they...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Grand Challenge: Fix the Hip Challenge
This lesson introduces the Bone Module Grand Challenge question. Students are asked to write their initial responses to the question alone. They will then brainstorm ideas with one other student. Finally, the ideas are shared with the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Skeletal System Overview
Students will learn about bone structure, bone development and growth, and bone functions. Later, students will apply this understanding to answer the Challenge Question presented in the "Fix the Hip" activity and use the acquired...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Protecting the Mummified Troll
Students are introduced to the (hypothetical) task of developing an invisible (non-intrusive) security system to protect the school's treasured mummified troll! Solving the challenge depends on an understanding of the properties of...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Learning Light's Properties
Students learn the basic properties of light--the concepts of light absorption, transmission, reflection and refraction, as well as the behavior of light during interference. Lecture information briefly addresses the electromagnetic...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Laser Types and Uses
Through two classroom demos, students are introduced to the basic properties of lasers through various mediums. In the Making an Electric Pickle demonstration, students see how cellular tissue is able to conduct electricity, and how this...