Grand Designs And Great Failures

William Bell's Forbidden City is used as the basis of a study of China, Chinese culture and government, and especially of the events in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Class members select a topic for Internet research and then prepare a...

Here is a tasty challenge, especially for middle school engineers: design a container that meets mass and volume criteria, and will safely transport a tortilla or potato chip through the mail without damaging it! Mostly, this is a crisp...

Scholars learn about a series of three challenges when they design a bus system for a small town. They determine the bus routes and then figure out the best type of fuel to use before considering the cost of going electric. Learners...

Groups of two to four work together to design, construct, and experiment with a boat. Each boat must include all of the major parts of a real ship, be less than 12 inches long, and be able to carry a load up twice its own weight in calm...

Students, in teams, follow the process of design, including the stages of investigation, creation, and reflection, as they devise a way to help "save" a (simulated) pet who is trapped in a pipe.

A five-lesson unit challenges teams to design a complex to allow people to colonize the Moon. The teams first work in order to understand the challenge before becoming experts. Expert teams learn about different aspects needed to survive...

Students design, build, and test the specifications (water displacement and load line) for a model boat. The lesson focuses especially on integrating design principles with inquiry-based experimental skills.

Sixth graders develop an understanding of floating, sinking, density, and buoyancy and apply it to the design of testing of ships.

This open-ended boat building exercise is meant to be part of a three-lesson series on ships. Links to the other two lessons are included. This particular part is mostly a group lab activity in which they build a boat, find its load line...