TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Robotics Peripheral Vision
This unit is designed for advanced programming classes. It leads students through a study of human vision and computer programming simulation. Students apply their previous knowledge of arrays and looping structures to implement a new...
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: Android App Development
Students develop an app for an Android device that utilizes its built-in internal sensors, specifically the accelerometer. The goal of this activity is to teach programming design and skills using MIT's App Inventor software (free to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Humans Are Like Robots
Four lessons related to robots and people present students with life sciences concepts related to the human body (including brain, nervous systems and muscles), introduced through engineering devices and subjects (including computers,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: That's Hot! Robot Brain Programming
With the challenge to program computers to mimic the human reaction after touching a hot object, students program LEGO robots to "react" and move back quickly once their touch sensors bump into something. By relating human senses to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Mars Rover App Creation
Based on their experience exploring the Mars rover Curiosity and learning about what engineers must go through to develop a vehicle like Curiosity, students create Android apps that can control LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots, simulating the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Rotary Encoders & Human Computer Interaction
Students learn about rotary encoders and discover how they operate through hands-on experimentation. Rotary encoders are applied in tools to determine angle measurements and for translations of angular motion. One common rotary encoder...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Computer Simulation of the Sonoran Desert Community
The computer program's simulation of a Sonoran desert community should ultimately strengthen the student's comprehension of what is required for a natural ecosystem to sustain itself (remain in balance). This computer simulation program...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is a Program?
Using a few blindfolds and a simple taped floor maze exercise, learners 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: Maze Challenge
As the first engineering design challenge of the unit, students are introduced to the logic for solving a maze. student groups apply that logic to program LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots to navigate through a maze, first with no sensors, 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: Are We Like Robots?
Young scholars 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...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Using Waits, Loops and Switches
Students incorporate their knowledge of wait blocks, loops, and switches into their programming of the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots to perform different tasks depending on input from a sound sensor and two touch sensors. This activity...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Hearing: How Do Our Ears Work?
Students learn about the anatomy of the ear and how the ears work as a sound sensor. Ear anatomy parts and structures are explained in detail, as well as how sound is transmitted mechanically and then electrically through them to the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Music by Touch
Through a hands-on design challenge involving LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots, students learn programming skills and logic design as they program robot computers to play sounds and rotate a wheel when a touch sensor is pressed, and then...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Flow Charting App Inventor Tutorials
Students design and create flow charts for the MIT App Inventor tutorials in this computer science activity about program analysis. In program analysis, which is based on determining the behavior of computer programs, flow charts are an...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Measuring Noise Pollution
Through investigating the nature, sources and level of noise produced in their environment, students are introduced to the concept of noise pollution. They learn about the undesirable and disturbing effects of noise and the resulting...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Hidden in Plain Sight
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...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Understanding Communication With a Robot
Student pairs first act out the instructions a robot is given with one person providing instructions and the other person following the instructions. This activity helps students understand how a robot is programmed and with what type of...
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: Evolving Tce Biodegraders
A hypothetical scenario is introduced in which the class is asked to apply their understanding of the forces that drive natural selection to prepare a proposal along with an environmental consulting company to help clean up an area near...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Gears: Determining Angular Velocity
Students work as engineers and learn to conduct controlled experiments by changing one experimental variable at a time to study its effect on the experiment outcome. Specifically, they conduct experiments to determine the angular...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Friction Force
Students use LEGO MINDSTORMS robotics to help conceptualize and understand the force of friction. Specifically, they observe how different surfaces in contact result in different frictional forces. A LEGO robot is constructed to pull a...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: A Lego Introduction to Graphing
Students use a LEGO ball shooter to demonstrate and analyze the motion of a projectile through use of a line graph. This activity involves using a method of data organization and trend observation with respect to dynamic experimentation...