Race to the Top! Modeling Skyscrapers

Working individually or in pairs, students compete to design, create, test and redesign free-standing, weight-bearing towers using Kapla(TM) wooden blocks. The challenge is to build the tallest tower while meeting the design criteria and minimizing the amount of material used all within a time limit. Students experiment with different geometric shapes used in structural designs and determine how design choices affect the height and strength of structures, becoming comfortable with the concepts of structural members and modeling.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: Sara Pace

Save the Stuffed Animal! Push & Pull

Students develop an understanding of the concepts of "push" and "pull" as they "save" stuffed animals from danger using LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT robots. After learning more about the concepts through a robot demonstration, students explore the concepts themselves in the context of saving stuffed animala from the table edges. They choose to either push or pull the animal to safety, depending on the orientation of the robot and toy. They see the consequences of their choices, learning the importance of understanding these force concepts and the differences between them.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Authors: Monique Moore, Ursula Koniges

Scale Model of the Earth

Students gain an understanding of the layers of the Earth by designing and building clay models.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Authors: Janet Yowell, Jennifer Greever, Jessica Todd, Malinda Schaefer Zarske, Melissa Straten

The Plastic Test

After a brief history of plastics, students look more closely as some examples from the abundant types of plastics found in our day-to-day lives. They are introduced to the mechanical properties of plastics, including their stress-strain relationships, which determine their suitability for different industrial and product applications. These physical properties enable plastics to be fabricated into a wide range of products. Students learn about the different roles that plastics play in our lives, Young's modulus, and the effects that plastics have on our environment. Then students act as industrial engineers, conducting tests to compare different plastics and performing a cost-benefit analysis to determine which are the most cost-effective for a given application, based on their costs and measured physical properties.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Authors: Joseph Frezzo, Peter James Baker, Sharon Holiday

Hare and Snail Challenges

Students engage in the second design challenge of the unit, which is an extension of the maze challenge they solved in the first lesson/activity of this unit. Students extend the ideas learned in the maze challenge with a focus more on the robot design. Gears are a very important part of any machine, particularly when it has a power source such as engine or motor. Specifically, students learn how to design the gear train from the LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT servomotor to the wheel to make the LEGO taskbot go faster or slower. A PowerPoint® presentation, pre/post quizzes and a worksheet are provided.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Authors: Pranit Samarth, Sachin Nair, Satish S. Nair

The Bridge Challenge

In this interactive activity from the Building Big Web site, use your knowledge of bridge design to match the right bridge to the right location in a fictitious city.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Interactive

Authors: National Science Foundation, WGBH Educational Foundation

Paper Drop Design Competition

Using paper, paper clips and tape, student teams design flying/falling devices to stay in the air as long as possible and land as close as possible to a given target. Student teams use the steps of the engineering design process to guide them through the initial conception, evaluation, testing and re-design stages. The activity culminates with a classroom competition and scoring to evaluate how each team's design performed.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Authors: Howard Kimmel, John Carpinelli, Ronald Rockland

The Dam Challenge

In this interactive activity from the Building Big Web site, investigate dams in distress and decide if they should be repaired, removed, or left alone.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Interactive

Authors: National Science Foundation, WGBH Educational Foundation

The Dome Challenge

In this interactive activity from the Building Big Web site, think like an engineer and use your knowledge of dome design to match the right type of dome to the right location in a fictitious city.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Interactive

Authors: National Science Foundation, WGBH Educational Foundation

Drinking Water: Kids' Stuff

This site teaches kids about the importance of safe drinking water through teaching and learning resources such as an activity on how to build your own aquifer, experiments on the water treatment process, and the drinking water art project.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Let the Sun Shine!

Students learn how the sun can be used for energy. They learn about passive solar heating, lighting and cooking, and active solar engineering technologies (such as photovoltaic arrays and concentrating mirrors) that generate electricity. Students investigate the thermal energy storage capacities of test materials. They learn about radiation and convection as they build a model solar water heater and determine how much it can heat water in a given amount of time. In another activity, students build and compare the performance of four solar cooker designs. In an associated literacy activity, students investigate how people live "off the grid" using solar power.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Authors: Denise Carlson, Jeff Lyng, Malinda Schaefer Zarske, Sabre Duren, Xochitl Zamora-Thompson

Magnet Circus

Explore the properties of magnets by designing a device that can move as far as possible using only magnets to move it, and then design a machine that will stay in motion for the greatest period of time.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Build an Approximate Scale Model of an Object

Students create models of objects of their choice, giving them skills and practice in techniques used by professionals. They make sketches as they build their objects. This activity facilitates a discussion on models and their usefulness.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Natural Disasters

Students are introduced to our planet's structure and its dynamic system of natural forces through an examination of the natural hazards of earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides, tsunamis, floods and tornados, as well as avalanches, fires, hurricanes and thunderstorms. They see how these natural events become disasters when they impact people, and how engineers help to make people safe from them. Students begin by learning about the structure of the Earth; they create clay models showing the Earth's layers, see a continental drift demo, calculate drift over time, and make fault models. They learn how earthquakes happen; they investigate the integrity of structural designs using model seismographs. Using toothpicks and mini-marshmallows, they create and test structures in a simulated earthquake on a tray of Jell-O. Students learn about the causes, composition and types of volcanoes, and watch and measure a class mock eruption demo, observing the phases that change a mountain's shape. Students learn that the different types of landslides are all are the result of gravity, friction and the materials involved. Using a small-scale model of a debris chute, they explore how landslides start in response to variables in material, slope and water content. Students learn about tsunamis, discovering what causes them and makes them so dangerous. Using a table-top-sized tsunami generator, they test how model structures of different material types fare in devastating waves. Students learn about the causes of floods, their benefits and potential for disaster. Using riverbed models made of clay in baking pans, students simulate the impact of different river volumes, floodplain terrain and levee designs in experimental trials. They learn about the basic characteristics, damage and occurrence of tornadoes, examining them closely by creating water vortices in soda bottles. They complete mock engineering analyses of tornado damage, analyze and graph US tornado damage data, and draw and present structure designs intended to withstand high winds.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Wild Wind

Students will learn the difference between global, prevailing and local winds. In this activity, students will make a wind vane out of paper, a straw and a soda bottle and use it to measure wind direction over time. Finally, they will analyze their data to draw conclusions about the prevailing winds in their area.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Authors: Janet Yowell, Jessica Todd, Malinda Schaefer Zarske, Melissa Straten

The Great Divide

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

Authors: Amy Kolenbrander, Janet Yowell, Jessica Todd, Malinda Schaefer Zarske

Naturally Disastrous

Students are introduced to natural disasters, and learn the difference between natural hazards and natural disasters. They discover the many types of natural hazards avalanche, earthquake, flood, forest fire, hurricane, landslide, thunderstorm, tornado, tsunami and volcano as well as specific examples of natural disasters. Students also explore why understanding these natural events is important to engineers and everyone's survival on our planet.

Material Type: Activity/Lab, Lesson Plan

Authors: Denise W. Carlson, Geoffrey Hill, Malinda Schaefer Zarske

Gravity and Bottle Flipping

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

Author: Andrea Mangold

Blow-and-Go Parachute

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

Authors: Ben Heavner, Denise Carlson, Malinda Schaefer Zarske, Sabre Duren

Body System Amusement Parks

In the Body System Amusement Parks project, students team up to create amusement parks based on the various systems and organs within the human body. With the power of abstraction, each attraction represents the cardiovascular system, the muscular system, the digestive system, etc. Teams create both 3D scale models and presentations to an unnamed wealthy investment firm looking to build a new park in the students’ very own town. This activity was heavily inspired by a post from Danielle Dace.

Material Type: Activity/Lab

Author: Eli Sheldon