This unit on nanoparticles engages students with a hypothetical Grand Challenge Question that asks about the skin cancer risk for someone living in Australia, given the local UV index and the condition of the region's ozone layer. The question asks how nanoparticles might be used to help detect, treat and protect people from skin cancer. Through three lessons, students learn about the science of electromagnetic radiation and energy waves, human skin and its response to ultraviolet radiation, and the state of medical nanotechnology related to skin cancer. Through three hands-on activities, students perform flame tests to become familiar with the transfer of energy in quantum form, design and conduct their own quality-control experiments to test sun protection factors (SPFs), and write nanotechnology grant proposals.

Students are presented with a biomedical engineering challenge: Breast cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer-related death among women and the American Cancer Society says mammography is the best early-detection tool available. Despite this, many women choose not to have them; of all American women at or over age 40, only 54.9% have had a mammogram within the past year. One reason women skip annual mammograms is pain, with 90% reporting discomfort. Is there a way to detect the presence of tumors that is not as painful as mammography but more reliable and quantifiable than breast self-exams or clinical breast exams? This three lesson/three activity unit is designed for first-year accelerated or AP physics classes. It provide hands-on activities to teach the concepts of stress, strain and Hooke's law, which students apply to solve the challenge problem.

Challenged with a hypothetical engineering work situation in which they need to figure out the volume and surface area of a nuclear power plant’s cooling tower (a hyperbolic shape), students learn to calculate the volume of complex solids that can be classified as solids of revolution or solids with known cross sections. These objects of complex shape defy standard procedures to compute volumes. Even calculus techniques depend on the ability to perform multiple measurements of the objects or find functional descriptions of their edges. During both guided and independent practice, students use (free GeoGebra) geometry software, a photograph of the object, a known dimension of it, a spreadsheet application and integral calculus techniques to calculate the volume of complex shape solids within a margin of error of less than 5%—an approach that can be used to compute the volumes of big or small objects. This activity is suitable for the end of the second semester of AP Calculus classes, serving as a major grade for the last six-week period, with students’ project results presentation grades used as the second semester final test.

In this service-learning engineering project, students follow the steps of the engineering design process to design a hearing testing device. More specifically, they design a prototype machine that can be used to test the peripheral vision of partially-blind, pre-verbal children. Students learn about the basics of vision and vision loss. They also learn how a peripheral vision tester for adults works (by testing the static peripheral vision in the four quadrants of the visual field with four controllable lights in specific locations). Then they modify the idea of the adult peripheral vision tester to make it usable for testing young children. The class designs and builds one complete prototype, working in sub-groups of four or five students each to build sub-components of the project design.

Students are presented with the unit's grand challenge problem: You are the lead engineer for a biomaterials company that has a cardiovascular systems client who wants you to develop a model that can be used to test the properties of heart valves without using real specimens. How might you go about accomplishing this task? What information do you need to create an accurate model? How could your materials be tested? Students brainstorm as a class, then learn some basic information relevant to the problem (by reading the transcript of an interview with a biomedical engineer), and then learn more specific information on how heart tissues work their structure and composition (lecture information presented by the teacher). This prepares them for the associated activity, during which students cement their understanding of the heart and its function by dissecting sheep hearts to explore heart anatomy.

Understanding the hazards of space weather on crewed and robotic missions is vital to informing plans for NASA's Journey to Mars and other missions into our solar system, and beyond.

Students are challenged to design and build wind chimes using their knowledge of physics and sound waves, and under given constraints such as weight, cost and number of musical notes it must generate. They make mathematical computations to determine the pipe lengths.

Students go through the design process and the scientific process to test the effect of blade design on power output. There is an optional extension to use the data to create an optimal set of wind turbine blades.

In addition to the associated lesson, this activity functions as a summative assessment for the Using Stress and Strain to Detect Cancer unit. In this activity, students will create a 1-D strain plot in Microsoft Excel depicting the location of a breast tumor amidst healthy tissue. The results of this activity will function as proof of the accuracy and reliability of the students' breast cancer detection design.

Students investigate passive solar building design with a focus on heating. Insulation, window placement, thermal mass, surface colors, and site orientation are addressed in the background materials and design preparation. Students test their projects for thermal gains and losses during a simulated day and night then compare designs with other teams for suggestions for improvements.