Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Nxt Ball Shooter

For Teachers 4th - 8th
This activity helps students understand how a motor in a LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robot uses electricity produced by the battery to move a robot to do useful work in the form of throwing a ball. Students relate the concepts of electricity and...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Power Your House With Water

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Students learn how engineers design devices that use water to generate electricity by building model water turbines and measuring the resulting current produced in a motor. Students work through the engineering design process to build...
Lesson Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Off the Grid

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Students learn and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of renewable and non-renewable energy sources. They also learn about our nation's electric power grid and what it means for a residential home to be "off the grid."
Lesson Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Generators: Three Mile Island vs. Hoover Dam

For Teachers 7th - 8th
Students are given a history of electricity and its development into the modern age lifeline upon which we so depend. The methods of power generation are introduced, and further discussion of each technology's pros and cons follows.
Lesson Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: What Is Bluetooth?

For Teachers 4th - 8th
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...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Power Your House With Wind

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Students learn how engineers harness the energy of the wind to produce power by following the engineering design process as they prototype two types of wind turbines and test to see which works best. Students also learn how engineers...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Sensing Air Pollution

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Students learn about electricity and air pollution while building devices to measure volatile organic compounds (VOC) by attaching VOC sensors to prototyping boards. In the second part of the activity, students evaluate the impact of...
Unit Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Mixtures and Solutions

For Teachers 5th - 7th
This unit covers introductory concepts of mixtures and solutions. Students think about how mixtures and solutions, and atoms and molecules can influence new technologies developed by engineers. The first lesson explores the fundamentals...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Renewable Energy Living Lab: The Bright Idea

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Students use real-world data to evaluate the feasibility of solar energy and other renewable energy sources in different U.S. locations. Working in small groups, students act as engineers evaluating the suitability of installing solar...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Renewable Energy Living Lab: Energy Experts

For Teachers 5th - 8th
Students use real-world data to evaluate various renewable energy sources and the feasibility of implementing these sources. Working in small groups, students use data from the Renewable Energy Living Lab to describe and understand the...
Lesson Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Lights Out!

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
This lesson introduces the concept of electricity by asking students to imagine what their life would be like without electricity. Two main forms of electricity, static and current, are introduced. Students learn that electrons can move...
Lesson Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Electrons on the Move

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Young scholars learn about current electricity and necessary conditions for the existence of an electric current. Students construct a simple electric circuit and a galvanic cell to help them understand voltage, current and resistance.
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Completing the Circuit

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
In the everyday electrical devices we use - calculators, remote controls and cell phones - a voltage source such as a battery is required to close the circuit and operate the device. In this hands-on activity, students use a battery,...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Lights On!

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Students in this activity will build simple circuits using a battery, wires, and light bulbs. This activity allows students to examine how electricity is conducted through a light bulb using a battery as a power source. Students will...
Lesson Plan
Other

Engineering Your Future Ohio: Della Steam Plant Case Study

For Teachers 9th - 10th
This lesson gives a real world example of challenges and choices engineers face in their careers. The Della Steam Plant Case Study allows students to analyze and present finding about a problem found in the power plant's turbine system....
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Building an Electromagnet

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Student teams investigate the properties of electromagnets. They create their own small electromagnet and experiment with ways to change its strength to pick up more paper clips. Students learn about ways that engineers use...
Online Course
Cosmo Learning

Cosmo Learning: Basic Electrical Technology

For Students 9th - 10th
A collection of video lectures from a course introducing students to the basic concepts of electrical technology. Webpage includes thirty-nine lectures from a professor at the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning. Lectures...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Circuits and Magnetic Fields

For Teachers 9th - 10th
In this activity, students use the same method as in the activity from lesson 2 to explore the magnetism due to electric current instead of a permanent magnet. Students use a compass and circuit to trace the magnetic field lines induced...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Whose Field Line Is It, Anyway?

For Teachers 5th - 8th
Students teams each use a bar magnet, sheet of paper and iron shavings to reveal the field lines as they travel around a magnet. They repeat the activity with an electromagnet made by wrapping thin wire around a nail and connecting...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Pointing at Maximum Power for Pv

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Student teams measure voltage and current in order to determine the power output of a photovoltaic (PV) panel. They vary the resistance in a simple circuit connected to the panel to demonstrate the effects on voltage, current, and power...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: A New Angle on Pv Efficiency

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Students examine how the orientation of a photovoltaic (PV) panel relative to the sun affects the efficiency of the panel. Using sunshine (or a lamp) and a small PV panel connected to a digital multimeter, students vary the angle of the...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Ice, Ice, Pv!

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Students examine how the power output of a photovoltaic (PV) solar panel is affected by temperature changes. Using a 100-watt lamp and a small PV panel connected to a digital multimeter, teams vary the temperature of the panel and record...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Am I on the Radio?

For Teachers 7th - 9th
During this activity, students create a working radio by soldering circuit components supplied from an AM radio kit. Since this activity is carried out in conjunction with the associated lessons concerning circuits and how an AM radio...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Bulbs & Batteries Side by Side

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
We are surrounded everyday by circuits that utilize "in parallel" and "in series" circuitry. Complicated circuits designed by engineers are made of many simpler parallel and series circuits. In this hands-on activity, students build...