Start your engines! This five-lesson unit introduces physics and Newton's laws through automobile racing. Each lesson includes background information, a student worksheet, and an answer key. There are also culminating...

Make the most of project-based learning with Makerspace. A playbook shows instructors and other interested parties how to set up a Makerspace and Maker community to foster STEM projects. It gives ideas for startup activities and for...

Learning about waves can have its ups and downs, but a demo-packed tool kit has the class "standing" for more! Learners gain experience with several different wave types, organizing observations and data, and wave...

Students Fulfill the requirements of Texas Standards as it relates to math and science. In this circle lesson, students identify the arcs and angles of a circle as it relates to Pi. They solve real life scenarios using space as an example.

Through a five-lesson series with five hands-on activities, students are introduced to six simple machines - inclined plane, wedge, screw, lever, pulley, wheel-and-axle - as well as compound machines, which are combinations of two or...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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....

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...

Through this unit, students act as engineers who are given the challenge to design laparoscopic surgical tools. After learning about human anatomy and physiology of the abdominopelvic cavity, especially as it applies to laparoscopic...

Five lessons about the study of fluid mechanics. The unit concludes with students applying what they have learned to determine the stability of individual above-ground storage tanks given specific storm conditions so they can analyze...

Students are introduced to the world of creative engineering product design. Through six activities, teams work through the steps of the engineering design process (or loop) by completing an actual design challenge presented in six...

This unit provides students the opportunity to explore methods engineers have devised for harnessing sunlight to generate power. Students will initially explore heat transfer and heat storage through the construction, testing, and...

Through a series of three lessons and one activity, students are introduced to inertia, forces, and Newton's three laws of motion.

A description of how lift is a mechanical force that requires a fluid moving through a solid object and a change in velocity.