Other
Fuel Our Future Now: Grade K 2 Module: Vroom! Vroom! What Makes Cars Go? [Pdf]
In this K-2 teaching module, students explore motion, gravity, friction, and energy using objects and model cars. They investigate using hands-on activities with vehicles, as well as online interactives and videos. The culminating event...
Other
Lincoln Public Schools: Applied Technology & Engineering: Mousetrap Car It's a Snap! [Pdf]
This is an engineering activity that requires students to build a mousetrap car based on certain constraints. Constraints include students having a virtual budget that they use to buy approved parts for their car, the car having...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Exploring Solar Power
This unit provides students the opportunity to explore methods engineers have devised for harnessing sunlight to generate power. Students will initially explore heat transfer and heat storage through the construction, testing, and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Universal Language of Engineering Drawings
Students practice the ability to produce clear, complete, accurate and detailed design drawings through an engineering design challenge. Using only the specified materials, teams are challenged to draw a design for a wind-powered car....
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Mint Mobiles
Students design, build and test model race cars made from simple materials (lifesaver-shaped candies, plastic drinking straws, Popsicle sticks, index cards, tape) as a way to explore independent, dependent and control variables. They...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Mouse Trap Racing in the Computer Age!
Students design, build and evaluate a spring-powered mouse trap racer. For evaluation, teams equip their racers with an intelligent brick from a LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Education Base Set and a HiTechnic acceleration sensor. They use...
NASA
Nasa: Rockets Educator Guide: Newton Car
This lesson gives students direction on how to experiment using gravity and force. Students will make a wooden car and use different forces to make the car propel.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Energy of Motion
By taking a look at the energy of motion all around us, students learn about the types of energy and their characteristics. They first learn about the two simplest forms of mechanical energy: kinetic and potential energy, as illustrated...
Colorado State University
Colorado State Univ.: Heat Transfer Resistance Modeling
This site from the Colorado State University discusses the tranfer of heat by conduction and convection. Discussion centers around the application of these two heat transfer mechanisms to engines. The variables that effect the resistance...
Other
National Renewable Energy Laboratory: Junior Solar Car Competition
A design challenge through which students design and construct a solar-powered model car to compete in a road race. Students work in teams using the engineering design process to select the optimal gear ratio and components.
PBS
Pbs Teachers: Scientific American: Future Car: Model Car Design 5 8
Explore the fields of engineering and automobile design. Construct from a variety of materials a model of a vehicle that travels the greatest distance on balloon power.
Other
Mattel: Hot Wheels: Speedometry
This resource is part of a two unit curriculum designed for fourth-graders using the 5E Instructional Model (Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate and Evaluate) to support students as they investigate the effect that height and other...
Curated OER
Csu: Model of Basic Otto Cycle
This site from the Colorado State University discusses the Otto cycle of a car engine. Includes a highly mathematical treatment of the efficiency of such engines. Includes a link to a java applet investigating the efficiency of such...
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments: The Science of Racing: Newton Knew
For race car engineers, F = m a, is the backbone of the vast majority of calculations. The selection of gear ratios is one example. Investigate and create a mathematical model for the relationship between force, speed, mass, distance and...
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments: The Science of Racing: Time Laps
In this activity, you will create a picture of time and speed as they relate to changes in the weight of a radio controlled race car. This picture will be a graph - a mathematical model- that allows to you predict the speed of your radio...
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Harcourt: Biographies: Henry Ford Biografia (Espanol)
A brief biography of Henry Ford. Ford's great ideas were to improve the inventions around him and to produce them very efficiently. Good links to pictures and other information.