TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Swamp Cooler
Using a household fan, cardboard box and paper towels, student teams design and build an evaporative cooler (swamp cooler). They learn about the process that cools water during the evaporation of water. They make calculations to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Live Like an Animal
In this activity, students design an innovative human shelter that is inspired and informed by an animal structure. Each group is assigned an animal class, and they gather information about shelters used by the animals in that class....
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Engineers Speak for the Trees
Students begin by reading Dr. Seuss' "The Lorax" as an example of how overdevelopment can cause long-lasting environmental destruction. Students discuss how to balance the needs of the environment with the needs of human industry....
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Swinging With Style
Students experientially learn about the characteristics of a simple physics phenomenon - the pendulum - by riding on playground swings. They use pendulum terms and a timer to experiment with swing variables. They extend their knowledge...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Magician's Catapult
In this activity, students reinforce their understanding of compound machines by building a catapult. This compound machine consists of a lever and a wheel-and-axel. Catapults have been designed by engineers for a variety of purposes -...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Measuring Light Pollution
Students are introduced to the concept of light pollution by investigating the nature, sources and levels of light in their classroom environment. They learn about the adverse effects of artificial light and the resulting consequences on...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Discovering Phi: The Golden Ratio
Students discover the mathematical constant phi, the golden ratio, through hands-on activities. They measure dimensions of "natural objects"--a star, a nautilus shell and human hand bones--and calculate ratios of the measured values,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Commanding a Robot Using Sound
Students continue their exploration of the human senses and their engineering counterparts, focusing on the auditory sense. Working in small groups, students design, create and run programs to control the motion of LEGO TaskBots. By...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Sound From Left or Right?
Why do humans have two ears? How do the properties of sound help with directional hearing? Students learn about directional hearing and how our brains determine the direction of sounds by the difference in time between arrival of sound...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Would You Drink That?
This activity focuses on getting students to think about bacteria, water quality and water treatment processes. Students develop and test their hypotheses about the "cleanliness" of three water samples prepared by the teacher. Then they...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is a Nanometer?
Students are introduced to the nano-size length scale as they make measurements and calculate unit conversions. They measure common objects and convert their units to nanometers, giving them a simple reference frame for understanding the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Working Together to Live Together
Students experience civil and environmental engineering by planning a housing development in an existing biome, while also protecting the native species that live there. They conduct research, draw plans, make brochures and give...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Things That Matter to Flocculants
Prior to reaching households, water is exposed to a variety of treatments designed to render it fit for human consumption and use. One of the first treatment steps is the removal of suspended solids using chemical additives called...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Putting It All Together: Peripheral Vision
In this culminating activity of the unit, students bring together everything they've learned in order to write the code to solve the Grand Challenge. The code solution takes two images captured by robots and combines them to create an...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Cells
In this unit, students look at the components of cells and their functions and discover the controversy behind stem cell research. The first lesson focuses on the difference between prokaryotic and eukaryotic cells. In the second lesson,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Environment
Through 10 lessons and more than 20 hands-on activities, students are introduced to the concept of an environment and the many interactions within it. As they learn about natural and human-made environments, as well as renewable and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Mission to Mars
The Mission to Mars curricular unit introduces students to Mars-the Red Planet. Students discover why scientists are so interested in studying this mysterious planet. Many interesting facts about Mars are revealed, and the history of...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Surgical Device Engineering
This unit focuses on teaching students about the many aspects of biomedical engineering (BME). Students will see that it is a broad field that relies on concepts from each of the other disciplines of engineering. They will also begin to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Cellular Respiration and Population Growth
Two lessons and their associated activities explore cellular respiration and population growth in yeasts. Yeast cells are readily obtained and behave predictably, so they are very appropriate to use in middle school classrooms. In the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Surface Tension
Surface tension accounts for many of the interesting properties we associate with water. By learning about surface tension and adhesive forces, students learn why liquid jets of water break into droplets rather than staying in a...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Engineering Nature: Dna Visualization and Manipulation
Students are introduced to genetic techniques such as DNA electrophoresis and imaging technologies used for molecular and DNA structure visualization. In the field of molecular biology and genetics, biomedical engineering plays an...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Aging Heart Valves
In this unit, students learn about the form and function of the human heart through lecture, research and dissection. Following the steps of the Legacy Cycle, students brainstorm, research, design and present viable solutions to various...
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: Skeletal System
Through this unit, written for an honors anatomy and physiology class, students become familiar with the human skeletal system and answer the Challenge Question: When you get home from school, your mother grabs you, and you race to the...