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Powerful Pulleys
Students explore the building of a pyramid and how pulleys were used to change the direction of applied force. They demonstrate the mechanical advantage of using a pulley and apply it to modern engineering.
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Engineering - Solid Rock to Building Block
Students role-play as engineers designing wedge tools. They devise methods for shaping quarry rocks into pyramid blocks. Following a teacher demonstration, they use materials such as soap, clay, and foam for blocks and wood, plastic,...
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Wheeling It In!
Students use everyday materials (milk cartons, water bottles, pencils, straws, candy) to build a small-scale transportation device that incorporates the wheel and axle and the lever. They race their carts/trucks, measure distance, time...
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Thar She Blows!: Wind Power
Students examine how wind energy is transformed into electrical energy. In pairs, they build miniature wind turbines and measure how much electrical current they produce. They asses the importance of design and position in energy...
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TE Lesson: Renewable Energy
Learners examine renewable energy sources such as solar, water, and wind. They experiment to determine how renewable energy is transformed into electricity. They investigate the role of engineers who work in the field of renewable energy.
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Capturing the Sun's Warmth
Students explore the variety of ways to use solar energy. They investigate the thermal energy storage capacities of different test materials to determine which to use in passive solar building design. They explain how passive solar...
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Energetic Musical Instruments
Students apply the principles and concepts associated with energy and the transfer of energy in an engineering context through the designing and making of a musical instrument. After the accomplishment of the design, students must...
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Falling Water
Students drop water from different heights to demonstrate the conversion of water's potential energy to kinetic energy. They see how varying the height from which water is dropped affects the splash size. In seeing how falling water can...
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TE Activity: Hot or Not
Students examine how the human immune system responds to germs and explain what a fever is. They design a thermometer in order to further explore temperature before completing a temperature conversion worksheet. They detail the work of...
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Rockets on a Shoestring Budget
Students, operating under simulated budget constraints, build pop-rockets and launch them. Working in pairs, they complete budget worksheets and use their "Blast Off Bucks" to pay for the construction. They then redesign their rockets...
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Stations of Light
Student groups rotate through four stations to examine light energy behavior: refraction, magnification, prisms and polarization. They see how a beam of light is refracted (bent) through various transparent mediums. Students investigate...
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Walk, Run, Jump!
Students participate in a series of timed relay races using their skeletal muscles. They compare the movement of skeletal muscle and relate how engineers help astronauts exercise skeletal muscles in space. They list the three types of...
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TE Activity: Yogurt Cup Speakers
Sixth graders build a speaker as they investigate the roles of electricity and magnetism. They discover the properties of magnets, create an electromagnet, and determine the direction of a magnetic field. They show cause and effect...
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Investigating Electrical Circuits
Sixth graders draw and construct a complete circuit. In small groups they develop a list of questions about electricity, listen to a teacher-led lecture, construct a complete circuit, test circuits, and create an illustration of a...
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Introduction to Measures of Central Tendency and Variability
Students calculate the mean, median, mode, range, and interquartile range for a set of data. They create a box and whisker plot using paper, pencil and technology.
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Conditions at Sea Data Activity
Students study how to forecast sea conditions. In this oceanography lesson students complete a class activity on wave making.
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Sound
Students identify sources and importance of sound, discuss sounds heard on way to school, explain why sound waves can be "seen", and participate in various classroom activities and experiments that illustrate how sound travels.
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Weather
Students explore the earth's atmosphere, weather, and climate. They begin class with a discussion about weather patterns, atmosphere, and the layers of the earth. After the class discussion, students rotate through four stations to...
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What is the Best Insulator: Air, Styrofoam, Foil, or Cotton?
Students investigate the properties of insulators by attempting to keep a cup of water from freezing, and once it is frozen, to keep it from melting. They conduct the experiment, record and analyze the results, and answer discussion...
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Rock Solid
Students investigate the three types of material stress related to rocks. They watch a PowerPoint Presentation, view an online animation of the three types of rock stress, identify the various types of rocks, answer true or false...
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Using Fulcrums
Students engage in a lesson that concentrates on the use of a lever and fulcrum. They define how a lever is used to lift a load. The lesson has background information to justify it. Students demonstrate how to use the lever while lifting...
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"Graphing Your Motion"
Students study the concepts of motion, velocity, and acceleration through graphing their own movement using LoggerPro. They explain the difference between speed and velocity using the weather vane example. They discover the difference...
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Drought Threatens Huge Man-Made Lake
Students locate Lake Mead, then read a news article about Lake Mead drying up and how that would effect water and power supplies to the region. In this current events lesson, the teacher introduces the article with a map and vocabulary...
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Ships to a New World
Young scholars experiment with buoyancy as a force. In this buoyancy lesson plan, students access an assigned website to examine the sailing vessels that came to the New World. They work as teams to build boats out of aluminum foil to...