Berkeley Engineering and Mentors
Marshmallow Challenge
Here is a lesson in collaboration cleverly disguised as an engineering design activity. There is no background material for you to teach here, just instructions about materials and rules for participating groups. Use this as...
Curated OER
Get Charged!
Learners explore the concept of electricity in this activity based unit. In this physical science lesson, students focus on electricity and electrical engineering. The teaching unit includes 5 activities to develop learners...
Curated OER
Acid Rain Effects
Get out the goggles and conduct a simple experiment to model and explore the harmful effects of acid rain (vinegar) on living (green leaf and eggshell) and non-living (paper clip) objects. Young chemists observe and describe the harmful...
Curated OER
I Don't Believe My Eyes!
Students develop their understanding of the effects of invisible air pollutants. In this invisible air lesson, students complete experiments with a rubber band air test, a bean plant experiment and by exploring engineering roles related...
Curated OER
Transportation and Environment
Students make an eco-friendly vehicle to help make transportation better for the environment. In this transportation lesson, students learn how transportation inventions are bad for the environment. They then see how engineers have tried...
NPR
Share and Reflect
Would you have done anything differently? Groups publish one-minute videos on their engineering solutions to the plastic problems. They self-reflect on their work throughout the unit.
NPR
Identify Criteria and Constraints
What defines success? The fourth installment of a 10-part series focuses on the criteria for engineering design success in solving the plastics problem. Pupils also consider any constraints.
Curated OER
Design And Construct A Road Sign Support
Students use simple materials to design, build, and test a model of a free-standing structure used to support overhead road signs. First, students watch a video on the engineering design process. Then the design challenge is defined.
Curated OER
Shapes That Make Structures Strong
Young scholars study the various shapes engineers choose to make structures strong -- in particular, triangles, arches, and domes. They construct a variety of forms, and discuss how tension and compression are distributed by triangles,...
Teach Engineering
Design Step 6: Evaluate/Manufacture a Final Product
This is what all of the excitement has been building up to! Young engineers create engineering drawings, use machines to manufacture their products, test, and evaluate their designs in the last step in the engineering design...
Teach Engineering
Design Step 5: Construct a Prototype
Enough with the talking, let's build something! In the fifth step in the engineering design process, young engineers build a prototype to test their ideas. The activity walks them through the process of evaluating it step-by-step....
Curated OER
Designing a Crew Exploration Vehicle
Take your class on an out-of-this-world adventure with this fun engineering design lesson plan. Working in small groups, young scientists design, build, and test crew exploration vehicles using some creativity, teamwork, and...
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Try Your Hand at Nano
Fascinating reading about nanotechnology, nanoscale properties, and liquid crystals precedes a fun activity for young engineers. They measure their hands in nanometers, research, and then investigate how heat effects a sheet containing...
Curated OER
Engineering
Students examine how Shell uses engineering. In this engineering principles lesson plan students visit a web-pages, answer questions, and examine the ways that engineers go about exploring different ideas.
Teach Engineering
Complex Networks and Graphs
Show your class how engineers use graphs to understand large and complex systems. The resource provides the beginnings of graph theory by introducing the class to set theory, graphs, and degree distributions of a graph.
Curated OER
Construction Technologies: Construct the Strongest Bridge
Students investigate how engineers use different types of bridges for different places. In small groups they design and construct bridges for three different scenarios, and answer a series of investigating questions applied to the...
Curated OER
Designing a 2-liter Pop Bottle Piece to be Used for Water Rockets
Students design and create water rockets using recycled materials. In this technology lesson, students measure and sketch their project design before drawing them using SolidWorks. They construct the bottle as accurately as possible.
Curated OER
Carve That Mountain
Students investigate major landforms (e.g., mountains, rivers, plains, hills, oceans and plateaus). They build a three-dimensional model of a landscape depicting several of these landforms. Once they have built their model, they act as...
Curated OER
TE Activity: Environmental Interactions
Students design a web that shows the interactions between the living and non-living parts of the environment. They determine what an environment is and how engineers work together to solve problems. They complete a tally chart that they...
Curated OER
Sparky's Engineer: A Story Book Introduction to Engineering
Students investigate what an engineer does. In this engineering lesson, students read the book "Sparky's Engineer" and analyze the different types of engineers that are referenced in the book. The students identify tools and machines...
Curated OER
Chemical Engineering: Volcanoes
Pupils study volcanoes using a chemical engineering project. In this volcanoes lesson, students create a model town and discuss the properties of a volcano. Pupils then make a volcano using a chemical engineering format for their town....
Teach Engineering
Six Minutes of Terror
Help your class understand the design challenges when trying to land a remote spacecraft on a planet. Class members examine the provided information to understand how each component of a spacecraft is designed in order to safely land a...
Teach Engineering
The Grand Challenge
Magnetic resonance imaging, just how safe is it? The introduction to unit study of magnetic resonance imaging technology presents the grand challenge questions of how an MRI machine works, the risks involved, the physics involved,...
Teach Engineering
Tell Me Doc—Will I Get Cancer?
Can you beat the odds of cancer? In the first installment of a seven-part series, future biomedical engineers consider how to detect and diagnose cancer. An article on biosensors provides useful information toward this goal.