Curated OER
Team Building
Students participate in various activities to become more successful as a team member. In this team building lesson, students discuss team jobs versus individual ones. Students must work together to complete activities such...
Teach Engineering
Bend That Bar
Bend it, but don't break it. Groups investigate the strength of different materials. Using a procedure in the seventh segment of a 22-part series on aviation, pupils determine how far a rod will bend. They determine the strength-to-mass...
Teach Engineering
Rock and Boat
Present the class with a question on whether the water level of a pond will rise they take a large rock out of a boat and drop it into the pond. Groups come down on all sides of the question and try to justify their answers. The activity...
Teach Engineering
Cost Comparisons
Our final proposal for the cost of the bridge requested is ... In the last segment in a series of 10, pairs work together to develop a proposal for a city bridge design. The class completes a cost comparison between concrete and steel to...
Curated OER
Motion Near Earth
In this motion activity, learners will match 5 physics vocabulary words relating to motion with their definitions. Then, they will review 9 statements of different motion scenarios to determine is the statement is true or false. Finally,...
Curated OER
Newton's Ist Law
Fourth graders explore Newton's First Law of Motion. They conduct an experiment to observe what happens to a ball that is placed carefully on slippery ice. They also observe what happens to a dowel on the ice, then draw and label...
Curated OER
How do engineless planes stay aloft?
Fifth graders explore how a plane can stay aloft. In this engineless airplane flying lesson plan, 5th graders experiment to find how the design of a plane and Bernoulli's principle keep planes in the air. Student's create a plane and...
Curated OER
Simple Machines: Pulleys
Students observe and analyze how pulleys work and how a double pulley can make work easier. In small groups they use a fixed pulley system and a double pulley system and draw a picture of how their pulley system functions. Students...
Curated OER
Water Wonders
Students experiment with the cohesion of water molecules. For this surface tension lesson, students estimate how many drops of water a full glass can take before overflowing. They watch a video that explains water molecules.
Curated OER
Gliders
High schoolers design and build a small glider. They see how the flight of a bird is similar to the flight of a sailplane. They explain how birds get their thrust and how they control their direction of flight.
Curated OER
Sports and Sir Isaac Newton
Eighth graders choose a sport to observe and capture pictures of Newton's Laws of motion in action within the sport. They import these pictures into Avid Cinema to create a multimedia project to go along with the written report and oral...
Curated OER
Newton's 2nd Law
Fourth graders explore Newton's second law of motion, testing and identifying the characteristics of objects that makes them easier or harder to push. They identify what types of objects are the hardest to move, then test a variety of...
Curated OER
Fluid Friction
Students, using wood blocks and model boats, investigate how the shape of an object affects friction it encounters as it is drawn through a towing tank.
Curated OER
Simple Machines - Graphics, Experiments, Animation
Twelfth graders display simple machines through the use of graphics, experiments, and animation. They apply problem solving and design and skills.
Curated OER
Beach Zonation
Young scholars investigate the characteristics of the beach environment and explore beach zonation. After gathering samples from different areas of the beach, students discuss how the beaches work and the characteristic of each zone....
Curated OER
Wind Effects on Model Building: Lab for Deflection and Moment of Inertia
Pupils investigate the relationship between shape of object and moment of inertia. In this physics lesson, students collect data from the experiment and use spreadsheet to graph them. They discuss how load affects deflection.
Curated OER
I've Got That Sinking Feeling
Learners design a simple boat and predict how much weight it can carry. They should also discover why objects float or sink and how this can be determined experimentally. A great instructional activity on buoyancy!
Curated OER
Earth's Orbit Lesson
Tenth graders devise a computational model to explore how the orbit of the Earth might change if its velocity were different. Using accurately recorded data, 10th graders defend a scientific argument.
Curated OER
Operating Kitchen Equipment
Students spend this lesson discovering how electricity makes the appliances in their kitchen operate. In groups, they explain how energy is being converted in a microwave oven and practice giving others directions to how to use them. ...
Curated OER
The Mag Mile and ... Torque!
Learners use paper plates and detailed directions to build a model of the Michigan Avenue Bridge's gear system. By carefully measuring and cutting "teeth" for the gears of the "Gear Train," they create small gear that will intersect the...
Curated OER
Contact Angle. Interfacial Tension and Wetting
Students determine the contact angle of water on different surfaces. In this physics lesson, students calculate their percent error using a mathematical formula. They explain the advantages of using non-wetting surface for certain...
Curated OER
Swinging on a String
Students explore how pendulums work and why they are useful in everyday applications. In a hands-on activity, they experiment with string length, pendulum weight and angle of release.
Curated OER
Bird Eggs
Learners perform an experiment with different types of bird eggs to determine what factors make them strong and able to stay on a cliff without rolling off.
Curated OER
Fossil Fuels (III), The Geology of Coal: Interpreting Geologic History
Students hypothesize about why various samples of coal have different characteristics. Pupils use information that they found during Internet searches to ascertain the validity of their hypotheses and verify the "story" of coal. ...