In this activity, students will use their knowledge of area and perimeter to create a racetrack. Once they have the correct specifications they will guide their car through the track using the properties of magnets.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
This PowerPoint is a generic description of the Engineering Design Process that walks students through the 6 step process that works in a continual loop of defining the problem, generate concepts, develop a solution, construct and test a prototype, evaluate a solution, and present a solution. This PowerPoint offers stopping points to encourage question and answer sessions as well as discussion opportunities if teachers choose to relate it to a particular problem. It was originally posted and authored by Alexandrea Dunkelberger.
Material Type: Diagram/Illustration, Teaching/Learning Strategy
In this project students will research and then build a basic solar cooker shell made out of cardboard. Then they will run a variety of materials through experiments. Data from the experiments will be used to determine which materials should be added to the solar cooker shell to improve its ability to heat up food. This project was created as a collaboration between a science and an engineering/woodshop class. The engineering class researched and build the basic solar cooker cardboard shells. The science class tested additional materials to add to the shells to improve the solar cookers. Then the engineering class, following the directions from reports created by the science class, added the materials to the solar cooker shells to create the final products.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan, Reading, Unit of Study
In this activity, students will use cookies to simulate the distribution of our nonrenewable resources (energy). Then, they will discuss how the world's growing population affects the fairness and effectiveness of this distribution of these resources and how engineers work to develop technologies to support the population.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
A park ranger needs to build a zipline to drop food supplies to her mentor park ranger at the bottom of a gorge. Unfortunately, she does not have the instructions to build the zipline according to the proper specifications. Without directions, she is unsure of the correct angles to attach her zipline to each tree. Additionally, she needs to figure out how to open the chute to drop the food supplies. Challenge: Create a zip line that will release from her bucket (paper cup) the food supplies (represented by a marble) onto the target (placed 5/8 of the way down the zipline) before the gear reaches the opposite end of the zip line.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
The students will explore, research, and become more knowledgeable in various careers in science. Students will apply this knowledge by creating a lab, hands-on activity, visual, or video. Opportunity for student choice is provided and creativity to apply their understanding is given.
Material Type: Lesson Plan
Students make a skydiver and parachute contraption to demonstrate how drag caused by air resistance slows the descent of skydivers as they travel back to Earth. Gravity pulls the skydiver toward the Earth, while the air trapped by the parachute provides an upward resisting force (drag) on the skydiver.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
In this hands-on activity rolling a ball down an incline and having it collide into a cup the concepts of mechanical energy, work and power, momentum, and friction are all demonstrated. During the activity, students take measurements and use equations that describe these energy of motion concepts to calculate unknown variables and review the relationships between these concepts.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
Researching different cultures in the Eastern and Western Hemisphere. 6.3.3 Describe and compare major physical characteristics of regions in Europe and the Americas. 6.3.4 Describe and compare major cultural characteristics of regions in Europe and the Western Hemisphere.
Material Type: Interactive
Students gain an understanding of the factors that affect wind turbine operation. Following the steps of the engineering design process, engineering teams use simple materials (cardboard and wooden dowels) to build and test their own turbine blade prototypes with the objective of maximizing electrical power output for a hypothetical situation—helping scientists power their electrical devices while doing research on a remote island. Teams explore how blade size, shape, weight and rotation interact to achieve maximal performance, and relate the power generated to energy consumed on a scale that is relevant to them in daily life. A PowerPoint® presentation, worksheet and post-activity test are provided.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
This lesson unit is intended to help assess how well students are able to interpret and use scale drawings to plan a garden layout. This involves using proportional reasoning and metric units.
Material Type: Assessment, Lesson Plan
In this project, each student will be assigned to a group of three to four students. Each group will be given random character description cards. These characters will be treated as the first generation in a fictitious town. The cards will include specific genetic traits, skills, jobs, as well as reference if the character suffers from type 2 diabetes. Students will need to use the character cards to author and illustrate a short story about the fictitious town which follows at least three generations of the families in the cards. Students must also include pedigrees for a minimum of three traits as well as diabetes as evidence of inheritance.
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Assessment, Lesson Plan
This resource is an activity to simulate the capture recapture method used by biologist to estimate the size of a population.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
How can you use the Engineering Design Process to access a geographically inaccessible location to deliver supplies?
Material Type: Activity/Lab, Assessment, Lesson, Lesson Plan, Student Guide
Play hockey with electric charges. Place charges on the ice, then hit start to try to get the puck in the goal. View the electric field. Trace the puck's motion. Make the game harder by placing walls in front of the goal. This is a clone of the popular simulation of the same name marketed by Physics Academic Software and written by Prof. Ruth Chabay of the Dept of Physics at North Carolina State University.
Material Type: Simulation
This website allows young learners to practice their coding skills. The website and app are free. The website also provides several beginner tutorials to familiarize teachers and students with how the tools work.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
Civil engineers design structures such as buildings, dams, highways and bridges. Student teams explore the field of engineering by making bridges using spaghetti as their primary building material. Then they test their bridges to see how much weight they can carry before breaking.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
Students groups use balsa wood and glue to build their own towers using some of the techniques they learned from the associated lesson. While general guidelines are provided, give students freedom with their designs and encourage them to implement what they have learned about structural engineering. The winning team design is the tower with the highest strength-to-weight ratio.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
This activity is designed to support a variety of STEM concepts: scientific method, making predictions, gathering and analyzing data, and developing conclusions based on experimentation. This activity draws on active student engagement, and is useful in many STEM content areas.
Material Type: Activity/Lab
The student created, student managed Kiski Area Veterans Website, established in 2016, showcases local veterans stories while honing Biographical Research skills. Combining Gigapan Technology with the power of G-Suite, photos of local monuments are uploaded to our site, serving as the foundation bringing students closer to local Veterans while encouraging community involvement in our curriculum.
Material Type: Diagram/Illustration
