Curated OER
Career Explorations and Personal Finance
Learners use various search engines and Web sites to find out information for a career they think they might like to pursue. They present their information to the class in an oral report.
Teach Engineering
Stop the Stretching
Stretch your teaching repertoire with an experiment on the elongation (stretching) and failure (break) of several materials. The point of the experiment is to design a composite material for chair webbing.
Teach Engineering
Balsa Glider Competition
Change one variable and try again. Teams build basic balsa gliders and collect data on their flight distances and times. Through collaboration, the team decides on two modifications to make to the basic design and collect data for the...
NASA
Marsbound! Mission to the Red Planet
It's time to go to Mars. Using the provided cards and mat, groups design a mission to Mars. The cards contain information about the different components of the launch and warn about a few mishaps that might occur along the way.
Teach Engineering
Package Those Foods!
Designing the right package — it's more than a pretty picture. Challenge small groups to design a food package. They must consider the type of food they are packaging and the package's ability to control the physical and...
Rochester Institue of Technology
Patient Flow
It's time to redesign the healthcare system. The seventh installment of a 9-part technology/engineering series teaches future engineers about patient flow and how to design healthcare centers to improve flow. Classroom simulations allow...
Rochester Institute of Technology
Biomechanical Hand
In 1993, five biomedical engineers in Edinburgh, Scotland, created the first functional bionic arm. In the activity, learners explore the world of bioengineering through discussion and hands-on exploration. In groups, participants...
Teach Engineering
Breaking the Mold
A little too much strain could cause a lot of stress. Groups conduct a strength test on clay. Using books as weights, pupils measure the compression of clay columns and calculate the associated strain and stress. Teams record their...
Teach Engineering
Discovering Relationships Between Side Length and Area
Consider the relationship between side length and area as an input-output function. Scholars create input-output tables for the area of squares to determine an equation in the first installment of a three-part unit. Ditto for the area of...
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Working with Wind Energy
Teams design and build a windmill, under budget, that can lift an object. The groups evaluate and reflect on their own design, then on those produced by other teams. The goal is to determine which design is the most...
Agriculture in the Classroom
Build it Better
If you think you can do better, feel free to give it a try. Pupils learn about the work on Temple Grandin and consider ways to improve animal handling facilities. They work in groups to build models to showcase their ideas.
Teach Engineering
Designing a Winning Guest Village in the Saguaro National Park
Don't desert a resource on the desert! Scholars work in groups to build on their ideas from the previous lesson to design a sustainable guest village in the Saguaro National Park. Each group produces a PowerPoint presentation to share...
Teach Engineering
May the Force Be With You: Lift
Get the class up and going with a lesson that discusses how airplane wings provide lift. Pupils use their knowledge of Bernoulli's Principle to develop an explanation of how it creates lift on airplane wings.
Curated OER
Blow-and-Go Parachute
Students design a skydiver and parachute constraption to demonstrate how drag caused by air resistance slows the descent of skydivers as they travel back to Earth. They experience how gravity pulls the skydiver toward the earth and how...
Teach Engineering
Considering Trade-Offs and Maximizing Efficiency in a Fast Food Restaurant
Make fast food restaurants even faster. Groups consider trade-offs when maximizing efficiency in fast food restaurants. Restructuring schedules and floor plans, as well reassigning job duties, all fall under this directive.
Teach Engineering
Extinction Prevention via Engineering
It's time to save endangered species through engineering. The third lesson in a nine-part Life Science unit has young environmentalists study species extinction. An engaging discussion leads to some ideas on how to use engineering design...
Tech Museum of Innovation
Energy at Play
Get the ball rolling and challenge your class to figure out how to make a ball move. The instruction segment is between two STEM activities devoted to doing just that. The first is simple and involves making a ball move from some...
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Build Your Own Robot Arm
Engineers team up to design and construct an 18-inch-long robotic arm that can successfully pick up a paper cup. Each group is given the exact same set of materials, but it is up to them to decide what to use and how to use it. It is a...
Teach Engineering
Constructing Sonoran Desert Food Chains and Food Webs
Investigate desert biomes by creating food chains and food webs. Groups first research feeding habits of organisms in the Sonoran Desert. This information helps pupils draw food chains and webs to determine relationship between organisms.
DiscoverE
Slime!!
Who's going to get slimed? Your entire class! Scholars create slime using Borax, water, and white glue. Some food coloring can give the slime a bit of color.
PBS
Pop Fly
A lever comes in handy when scholars build a launcher for a ping-pong ball. They test the launcher and redesign it to send the ball higher or to accommodate a tennis ball. This is the third lesson in a five-part unit.
Rochester Institute of Technology
Laparoscopic Surgery
Nobody is as smart as all of us together. In a collaborative learning activity, scholars learn it takes a team to be successful in laparoscopic surgeries. Groups complete the laparoscopic task as a team and discuss their results to...
Curated OER
Strawkets and Weight
Students investigate the effect that weight has on rocket flight. They construct a variety of straw-launched rockets that have different weights, observe what happens when the weight of a rocket is altered by reducing its physical size...
NASA
Space Transportation: Reshooting the Moon
What does it take to get stuff to the Moon? Design teams create subsystems for a space transportation system to go to the Moon. The teams study Earth transportation components along with historical space transportation systems to...