TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Soil Core Sampling
Students learn about one method used in environmental site assessments. They practice soil sampling by creating soil cores, studying soil profiles and characterizing soil profiles in borehole logs. They use their analysis to make...
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: Soil Investigations
Students learn the basics about soil, including its formation, characteristics and importance. They are also introduced to soil profiles and how engineers conduct site investigations to learn about soil quality for development,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: All Caught Up: Bycatching and Design
Bycatch, the unintended capture of animals in commercial fishing gear, is one of the hottest topics in marine conservation today. About 25% of the entire global catch is bycatch. This surprisingly high level of bycatch is responsible for...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Do as the Romans: Construct an Aqueduct!
In this activity, students work with specified materials to create aqueduct components that will transport 2 liters of water across a short distance in their classroom. The goal is to build an aqueduct that will supply Aqueductis, a...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Journey to the Afterlife
In groups of four, have students design an Egyptian funerary barge to transport the mummy through the underworld to the afterlife. The design of the boat is extremely critical in order for the mummy to have a chance to reach and enter...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Cleaning Air With Balloons
Students observe and discuss a simple balloon model of an electrostatic precipitator to better understand how this pollutant recovery method functions in cleaning industrial air pollution.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Let's Bag It
Students observe and discuss a vacuum cleaner model of a baghouse to better understand how this pollutant recovery method functions in cleaning industrial air pollution.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Design a Recycling Game!
Students will design a game where players try to come up with alternative uses for used products. Students will brainstorm ideas for an effective board game format.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Watt Meters to Measure Energy Consumption
Students use watt meters to measure the power required and calculate energy used from various electrical devices and household appliances.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Energy Intelligence Agency
This activity provides an active way for students to discover a few critical facts about how we use energy and how much energy we use. Each student has a "clue", some of which are pertinent energy facts and others are silly statements...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Rolling Blackouts & Environmental Impact
The goal is for the students to understand the environmental design considerations required when generating electricity. The electric power that we use every day at home and work is generated by a variety of power plants. Power plants...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Biological Processes: Putting Microbes to Work
Students learn the fundamentals of using microbes to treat wastewater. They discover how wastewater is generated and its primary constituents. Microbial metabolism, enzymes and bioreactors are explored to fully understand the primary...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Dams
Through eight lessons, students are introduced to many facets of dams, including their basic components, the common types (all designed to resist strong forces), their primary benefits (electricity generation, water supply, flood...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Where Are the Plastics Near Me? (Field Trip)
An adult-led field trip allows students to be organized into investigation teams that catalogue the incidence of plastic debris in different environments. These plastics are being investigated according to their type, age, location and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Where Are the Plastics Near Me? (Mapping the Data)
In a student-led and fairly independent fashion, data collected in the associated field trip activity are organized by student groups to create useful and informative Google Earth maps. Each team creates a map, uses that map to analyze...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Population Growth in Yeasts
This lesson is the second of two that explore cellular respiration and population growth in yeasts. In the first lesson, students set up a simple way to indirectly observe and quantify the amount of respiration occurring in...
Other
U.s. Green Building Council: Leadership in Energy & Environmental Design
LEED is a program for green building certification. Buildings are rated on a points system in one of five categories, including building design and construction, interior design and construction, building operations and maintenance,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Water Desalination Plant
Students use a thermal process approach to design, build and test a small-scale desalination plant that is capable of significantly removing the salt content from a saltwater solution. Students use a saltwater circuit to test the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Renew a Bead
A quantitative illustration of how non-renewable resources are depleted while renewable resources continue to provide energy. The activity requires students to remove beads (units of energy) from a bag (representing a country). A certain...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Energy in Our Lives Carousel
This activity is a way for students to discover that they already know a lot about energy through their own life experiences. As active consumers of various forms of energy, they are aware of energy purchases for electricity, home...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Household Energy Audit
Students review the electrical appliances used at home and estimate the energy used for each. The results can help to show the energy hogs that could benefit from conservation or improved efficiency.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Light vs. Heat Bulbs
Students measure the light output and temperature (as a measure of heat output) for three types of light bulbs to identify why some light bulbs are more efficient (more light with less energy) than others.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Renewable Energy Living Lab: Energy Priorities
Students analyze real-world data for five types of renewable energy, as found on the online Renewable Energy Living Lab. They identify the best and worst locations for production of each form of renewable energy, and then make...