Peak Performance

Class, start your engines. Future engineers design a car with old CDs as wheels. The power source? Some rubber bands will do the trick! This is the first installment of a five-part series.

Precise measurements make the job easier! One of the challenges when using an inclined plane for testing comes from pupils not using exact measurements. They often rely on books that slide or different ramp lengths when experimenting. By...

Who knew that paper is an amazing building material? Scholars learn about the properties of planar materials, such as paper, as well as their structural capabilities in the sixth lesson plan a series of 11 on architecture. Working in...

After walking in a nearby neighborhood, have your class create this amazing city street pop-up. They study the facades of the buildings they see, focusing on geometric line, shape, and architecture. They then draw, cut, and create a city...

This is an engineering activity that requires students to build a mousetrap car based on certain constraints. Constraints include students having a virtual budget that they use to buy approved parts for their car, the car having...

Your challenge is to design and build a rubber band-powered car that can crawl across the floor like a moon rover travels across the moon. Are you up to the challenge?

Ramp up the engineering design process in your classroom with an activity that challenges teams to design, build, and test a small-scale portable wheelchair ramp. The class develops design requirements, and teams test their designs using...

Create your own 4-wheel balloon cars with simple household items and race them across the floor.

Students build and race solar powered cars after a teacher lecture. They answer questions based on their experiences with the car they build.

Student groups are provided with a generic car base on which to design a device/enclosure to protect an egg as it rolls down a ramp at increasing slopes. During this activity, student teams design, build and test their prototype...