TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Prosthetic Party
Student teams investigate biomedical engineering and the technology of prosthetics. Students create a model prosthetic lower leg using various materials. Each team demonstrate its prosthesis' strength and consider its pros and cons,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Sticks and Stones Will Break That Bone!
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...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Artificial Bicep
Students learn more about how muscles work and how biomedical engineers can help keep the muscular system healthy. Following the engineering design process, they create their own biomedical device to aid in the recovery of a strained...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Measuring Our Muscles
Student teams build model hand dynamometers used to measure grip strengths of people recovering from sports injuries. They use their models to measure how much force their classmates muscles are capable of producing, and analyze the data...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Clearing a Path to the Heart
Following the engineering design process and acting as biomedical engineers, student teams use everyday materials to design and develop devices and approaches to unclog blood vessels. They learn about the circulatory system, biomedical...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Polluted Air = Polluted Lungs
To gain a better understanding of the roles and functions of components of the human respiratory system and our need for clean air, students construct model lungs that include a diaphragm and chest cavity. They see how air moving in and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Protect That Pill
Students reinforce their knowledge of the different parts of the digestive system and explore the concept of simulation by developing a pill coating that can withstand the churning actions and acidic environment found in the stomach....
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Protect Those Eyes
Students design and build prototypes for protective eyewear. They choose different activities or sports that require protective eyewear and design a device for that particular use. Students learn about the many ways in which the eyes can...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: You're the Expert
Student teams learn about and devise technical presentations on four reproductive technology topics pregnancy ultrasound, amniocentesis, in-vitro fertilization or labor anesthetics. Each team acts as a panel of engineers asked to make a...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Who Robbed the Bank?
Students use DNA profiling to determine who robbed a bank. After they learn how the FBI's Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) is used to match crime scene DNA with tissue sample DNA, students use CODIS principles and sample DNA fragments...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Repairing Broken Bones
Students learn about how biomedical engineers aid doctors in repairing severely broken bones. They learn about using pins, plates, rods and screws to repair fractures. They do this by designing, creating and testing their own prototype...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Convertible Shoes: Function, Fashion and Design
Students teams design and build shoe prototypes that convert between high heels and athletic shoes. They apply their knowledge about the mechanics of walking and running as well as shoe design (as learned in the associated lesson) to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: High Arches, Low Arches
A main concern of shoe engineers is creating shoes that provide the right amount of arch support to prevent (or fix) common gait misalignments that lead to injury. During this activity, students look at their own footprints and determine...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Saving a Life: Heart Valve Replacement
Students use their knowledge about how healthy heart valves function to design, construct and implant prototype replacement mitral valves for hypothetical patients' hearts. Building on what they learned in the associated lesson about...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Designing a Robotic Surgical Device
Student teams create laparoscopic surgical robots designed to reduce the invasiveness of diagnosing endometriosis and investigate how the disease forms and spreads. Using a synthetic abdominal cavity simulator, students test and iterate...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Artificial Heart Design Challenge
Students are presented with a hypothetical scenario in which they are biomedical engineers asked to design artificial hearts. Using the engineering design process as a guide, the challenge is established and students brainstorm to list...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Building the Neuron
In this activity, students design and build neuron models based on observations made while viewing neurons through a microscope.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: If You're Not Part of the Solution!
Students continue the research begun in the associated lesson as if they were biomedical engineers working for a pharmaceutical company. Groups each perform a simple chemical reaction (to precipitate solid calcium out of solution) to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Let the Blood Flow
Students work as biomedical engineers to find liquid solutions that can clear away polyvinyl acetate polymer "blood clots" in model arteries (made of clear, flexible tubing). Teams create samples of the "blood clot" polymer with...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Quantum Dots and Colors
Students are introduced to the physical concept of the colors of rainbows as light energy in the form of waves with distinct wavelengths, but in a different manner than traditional kaleidoscopes. Looking at different quantum dot...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Designing a Medical Device
Students learn the engineering design process by following the steps, from problem identification to designing a device and evaluating its efficacy and areas for improvement. A quick story at the beginning of the activity sets up the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Exploring Bone Mineral Density
In this activity, students will explore two given websites to gather information on Bone Mineral Density and how it is measured. They will also learn about X-rays in general, how they work and their different uses, along with other...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: You Be the Radiologist!
In addition to the associated lesson, this activity functions as a summative assessment for the Using Stress and Strain to Detect Cancer unit. In this activity, students will create a 1-D strain plot in Microsoft Excel depicting the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What's With All the Pressure?
Students learn how to take blood pressure by observing a teacher demonstration and then practicing on fellow classmates in small groups. Once the hands-on component of this activity is completed, the class brainstorms and discusses how...