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Students explore the inhalation/exhalation process that occurs in the lungs during respiration. Using everyday materials, each student team creates a model pair of lungs.
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Music: Sophomore Makeout - Silent Partner
Students build a saltwater circuit, which is an electrical circuit that uses saltwater as part of the circuit. Students investigate the conductivity of saltwater, and develop an understanding of how the amount of salt in a solution impacts how much electrical current flows through the circuit. They learn about one real-world application of a saltwater circuit — as a desalination plant tool to test for the removal of salt from ocean water.
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Music: Chopsticks - Jorge Hernandez
Students practice the initial steps involved in an engineering design challenge. They begin by reviewing the steps of the engineering design loop and discussing the client need for the project. Next, they identify a relevant context, define the problem within their design teams, and examine the project's requirements and constraints. (Note: Conduct this activity in the context of a design project that students are working on, which could be a challenge determined by the teacher, brainstormed with the class, or the example project challenge provided [to design a prosthetic arm that can perform a mechanical function].)
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music - Dream of A Day
Engineers make everyone happy: Environmental and electrical engineers design industrial air filters (such as electrostatic precipitators) that remove harmful pollutants from factory air without slowing down the production of the plant. Implementation of this technology has resulted in cleaner emissions into the air we breathe, from power plants, steel mills and other manufacturing and industrial processes and factories. Engineers can do this because they study static electricity and understand what is happening at the very tiny level of electrical charges, which are too small to see.
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https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/c
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Music: Safety Net-Riot
The minions are stuck on a deserted island! Students use the engineering design process to research, design, create and test boats that can rescue the minions. They learn about the physical properties of matter as well as the construction of boats and buoyancy while they engineer a minion rescue.
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TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit https://www.teachengineering.org/ for more
Music - Arriba Mami by Jingle Punks
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.
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https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/n
TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit http://www.TeachEngineering.org for more!
Music: Inevitable - Diamond Ortiz
We design and create objects to make our lives easier and more comfortable. The houses in which we live are excellent examples of this. Depending on your local climate, the features of your house have been designed to satisfy your particular environmental needs: protection from hot, cold, windy and/or rainy weather. In this activity, students design and build model houses, then test them against various climate elements, and then re-design and improve them. Using books, websites and photos, students learn about the different types of roofs found on various houses in different environments throughout the world.
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Music: Why did you do it- Everet Almond
Students work in teams of two to discover the relative positions of the Earth, Sun and Moon that produce the different phases of the Moon. Groups are each given a Styrofoam ball that they attach to a pencil so that it looks like a lollipop. In this acting-out model exercise, this ball on a stick represents the Moon, the students represent the Earth and a hanging lightbulb serves as the Sun. Students move the "Moon" around them to discover the different phases. They fill in the position of the Moon and its corresponding phase in a worksheet.
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music - cosmos
Concluding a two-part lab activity, students use triple balance beams and graduated cylinders to take measurements and calculate densities of several household liquids and compare them to the densities of irregularly shaped objects (as determined in Part 1). Then they create density columns with the three liquids and four solid items to test their calculations and predictions of the different densities. Once their density columns are complete, students determine the effect of adding detergent to the columns. After this activity, present the associated Density & Miscibility lesson for a discussion about why the column layers do not mix.
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Music: Electrodoodle
Students are presented with a challenge question that they must answer with scientific and mathematical reasoning. The challenge question is: "You have a large rock on a boat that is floating in a pond. You throw the rock overboard and it sinks to the bottom of the pond. Does the water level in the pond rise, drop or remain the same?" Students observe Archimedes' principle in action in this model recreation of the challenge question when a toy boat is placed in a container of water and a rock is placed on the floating boat. Students use terminology learned in the classroom as well as critical thinking skills to derive equations needed to answer this question.
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TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit http://www.TeachEngineering.org for more!
Music: Roger That - Silent Partner
Students learn how to create two-dimensional representations of three-dimensional objects by utilizing orthographic projection techniques. They build shapes using cube blocks and then draw orthographic and isometric views of those shapes—which are the side views, such as top, front, right—with no depth indicated. Then working in pairs, one blindfolded partner describes a shape by feel alone as the other partner draws what is described. A worksheet is provided. This activity is part of a multi-activity series towards improving spatial visualization skills.
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https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/c
TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit https://www.teachengineering.org/ for more
Music: EDM Detection Mode
Students design and build their own model levees. Acting as engineers for their city, teams create sturdy barriers to prevent water from flooding a city in the event of a hurricane.
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https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/c
TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit http://www.TeachEngineering.org for more!
Music: Jazzy Frenchy - Bensound.com
While the creation of a dam provides many benefits, it can have negative impacts on local ecosystems. Using the associated activity students learn about the major environmental impacts of dams and the engineering solutions used to address them.
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https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/lessons/view/cub_
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Students learn how to build simple piezoelectric generators to power LEDs. To do this, they incorporate into a circuit a piezoelectric element that converts movements they make (mechanical energy) into electrical energy, which is stored in a capacitor (short-term battery). Once enough energy is stored, they flip a switch to light up an LED. Students also learn how much (surprisingly little) energy can be converted using the current state of technology for piezoelectric materials.
View the full activity on TeachEngineering: https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/u
TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit http://www.TeachEngineering.org for more!
Music: Sugar - Vibe Tracks
This activity allows students to gain a better understanding for how algorithms work. Students engage in an activity which symbolizes the Google PageRank algorithm. Students divide into groups and follow specific steps, in the form of a ball game, in order to match the results of the Google PageRank algorithm. They also gain a general understanding for the functionality of networking on the internet. Students visualize the fundamental importance of algorithms, which can make calculations fast and easy.
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https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/c
TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit https://www.teachengineering.org/ for more
Music: Cold Funk - Funkorama
Students perform a macroinvertebrate survey to gauge the health of a local river. They collect water samples and count macroinvertebrates to learn how the health of a river's ecosystem can be determined by its river insect population.
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Music: Fudgetaboutit
Students design and build paper rockets around film canisters, which serve as engines. An antacid tablet and water are put into each canister, reacting to form carbon dioxide gas, and acting as the pop rocket's propellant. With the lid snapped on, the continuous creation of gas causes pressure to build up until the lid pops off, sending the rocket into the air. The pop rockets demonstrate Newton's third law of motion: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. An instructions handout, worksheets (English and Spanish) and quiz are provided.
View the full activity on TeachEngineering: https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/c
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Music: Little Idea - Bensound.com
Students investigate the property dependence between concentrations and boiling point. In section 1, students first investigate the boiling point of various liquid solutions. In section 2, they analyze data collected by the entire class to generate two boiling point curves, one for salt solutions and one for sugar solutions. Finally, in section 3, students use the data they have analyzed to determine how to create a solution that has a particular boiling point and is a cost-effective design.
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https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/w
TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit https://www.teachengineering.org/ for more
Music: Trancer
An exploration of an engineering brief from a mock toy company leads students to explore a new slime with a unique set of characteristics. Using simple directions, students create five different types of slime and classify their slime properties against the criteria provided by the mock toy company. Based on their observations, they identify the best slime recipe based on the resulting physical properties.
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https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/i
TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit https://www.teachengineering.org/ for more
Music: Cats and Gats - Dyalla
Students are introduced to two real-life problems that can be solved by using the engineering design process. For the first one, they follow along with a slide presentation that describes how a group of students built an organizer to help organize their teacher’s desk. The presentation introduces students to the key steps in the engineering design process. Next, in discussion groups, they read through a scenario in which middle school student Marisol struggles to keep her locker organized. They read the case study together, stopping and discussing at key points to share ideas and consider Marisol’s progress as she moves through the engineering design cycle to design and implement a solution. As an optional hands-on activity extension, students construct their own locker organizer using scrap materials. This introduction to the engineering design process sets up students to be able to conduct their own real-world design projects. A case study handout, group leader discussion sheet and slide presentation are provided.
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https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/u
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Music: Side Steppin' - Otis McDonald