TryEngineering
Try Engineering: Engineering Ups and Downs
Engineering design lesson examines the principles behind working elevators. Teams of students explore how elevators work, then design, build, and evaluate their own elevator to service a toy car garage.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Mechanics Mania
Through ten lessons and numerous activities, students explore the natural universal rules engineers and physicists use to understand how things move and stay still. Together, these rules are called "mechanics." The study of mechanics is...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Simple Machines From Pyramids to Skyscrapers
Simple machines are devices with few or no moving parts that make work easier, and which people have used to provide mechanical advantage for thousands of years. Students learn about the wedge, wheel and axle, lever, inclined plane,...
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...
Technovation
Curiosity Machine: Challenges: Build a Crank Mechanism
In this challenge, students will transfer rotational motion into linear motion by building a simple machine. The site also includes tips, a lesson plan, and a place for students to document their engineering design process.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Wide World of Gears
In an interactive and game-like manner, students learn about the mechanical advantage that is offered by gears. By virtue of the activity's mechatronics presentation, students learn to study a mechanical system as a dynamic system under...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Claw
Students learn about gear ratios and power by operating toy mechanical cranes of differing gear ratios. They attempt to pick up objects with various masses to witness how much power must be applied to the system to oppose the force of...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Teaching the Engineering Design Process
Students follow the steps of the engineering design process (EDP) while learning about assistive devices and biomedical engineering. They first go through a design-build-test activity to learn the steps of the cyclical engineering design...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Energy Systems and Solutions
The Energy Systems and Solutions unit brings students through the exploration of science and engineering concepts as they relate to energy issues in everyday life. Issues surrounding energy production and energy consumption provide a...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Off Road Wheelchair Challenge
Students further their understanding of the engineering design process (EDP) while being introduced to assistive technology devices and biomedical engineering. They are given a fictional client statement and are tasked to follow the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Implementing Biomimicry and Sustainable Design
This unit provides students with an opportunity to study ecological relationships with an emphasis on the Sonoran Desert. Students appreciate the complexity and balance that supports the exchange of energy and matter within food webs....
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Tug of War Battle Bots
Students are introduced to the concepts of torque, power, friction and gear ratios. Teams modify two robotic LEGO vehicles by changing their gear ratios, wheel sizes, weight and engine power, while staying within a limit of points to...
Learn Engineering
Learn Engineering: Understanding Degrees of Freedom
Explores how to predict degrees of freedom of a mechanism. Understand that in mechanics degrees of freedom is one of the most important concepts. Video length: 4 min. 41 sec.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Cars: Engineering for Efficiency
Students learn how the aerodynamics and rolling resistance of a car affect its energy efficiency through designing and constructing model cars out of simple materials. As the little cars are raced down a tilted track (powered by gravity)...
CK-12 Foundation
Ck 12 Exploration Series: Simulations: Physics: Heat Engine
[Free Registration/Login Required] Having trouble understanding the energy transfer in heat engines? This simulation allows students to learn about the conversion of heat energy to mechanical energy in the context of heat engine.
Learn Engineering
Learn Engineering: Diesel Engine vs. Petrol Engine
This video and article explore the differences and the similarities between petrol and diesel engines. The article discusses all topics found in the video. [4:06]
Washington State University
Washington State University: Ask Dr. Universe: How Do Cars Work?
Website from Washington State University answers questions kids have about science, mechanics and engineering in an easy to understand format. In this letter, Dr. Universe answers questions about how the family car works.
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...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Hybrid Vehicle Design Challenge
This module is written for a first-year algebra-based physics class, though it could easily be modified for conceptual physics. It is intended to provide hands-on activities to teach the overarching concept of energy, as it relates to...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Flying T Shirts
During this engineering design/build project, students investigate many different solutions to a problem. Their design challenge is to find a way to get school t-shirts up into the stands during home sporting events. They follow the...
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: Ding! Going Up? Elevators and Engineering
Students create model elevator carriages and calibrate them, similar to the work of design and quality control engineers. Students use measurements from rotary encoders to recreate the task of calibrating elevators for a high-rise...
Other
The Engineering and Science Foundation: Engineering Your Future
Authors invite students to explore this site in order to gather information about a future engineering career. Information is provided on various fields such as chemical and biomedical. Site also lists important classes related to the...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Fascinating Friction!
In this activity, students use wood, wax paper and oil to investigate the importance of lubrication between materials and to understand the concept of friction. Using wax paper and oil placed between pieces of wood, the function of...