Students learn about the difference between temperature and thermal energy. They create thermometers using simple materials and develop their own scales for measuring temperature. They compare their thermometers to a commercial thermometer, and get a sense for why engineers need to understand the properties of thermal energy.

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Music: Ukulele - Bensound.com

Students learn about the variety of materials used by engineers in the design and construction of modern bridges. They also find out about the material properties important to bridge construction and consider the advantages and disadvantages of steel and concrete as common bridge-building materials to handle compressive and tensile forces.

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Students first explore different materials to see what types reduce the most amount of sound when placed in a box. Each group is assigned a different material and they fill their box with that specific material. Students measure the sound level of a tone playing from inside the box using a decibel reader from outside the box. Students share this data with the class and analyze which types of materials absorb the most sound and which reflect the most sound.

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Music: Night at the Dance Hall- Twin Musicom

In this activity, students are challenged to design a contraption using simple machines to move a circus elephant into a rail car. After students consider their audience and constraints, they work in groups to brainstorm ideas and select one concept to communicate to the class.

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Music: Safety Net

Students are challenged to design their own small-sized prototype light sculptures to light up a hypothetical courtyard. To accomplish this, they use Arduino microcontrollers as the “brains” of the projects and control light displays composed of numerous (3+) light-emitting diodes (LEDs). With this challenge, students further their learning of Arduino fundamentals by exploring one important microcontroller capability—the control of external circuits. The Arduino microcontroller is a powerful yet easy-to-learn platform for learning computer programing and electronics. LEDs provide immediate visual success/failure feedback, and the unlimited variety of possible results are dazzling!

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Music: New Tires - Silent Partner

In this lesson, students are introduced to both potential energy and kinetic energy as forms of mechanical energy. A hands-on activity demonstrates how potential energy can change into kinetic energy by swinging a pendulum, illustrating the concept of conservation of energy. Students calculate the potential energy of the pendulum and predict how fast it will travel knowing that the potential energy will convert into kinetic energy. They verify their predictions by measuring the speed of the pendulum.

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Music - Tyler Kimbell

Students explore how pendulums work and why they are useful in everyday applications. In a hands-on activity, they experiment with string length, pendulum weight and angle of release. In an associated literacy activity, students explore the mechanical concept of rhythm, based on the principle of oscillation, in a broader biological and cultural context — in dance and sports, poetry and other literary forms, and communication in general.

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Music -Tyler Kimbell

Students examine how different balls react when colliding with different surfaces, giving plenty of opportunity for them to see the difference between elastic and inelastic collisions, learn how to calculate momentum, and understand the principle of conservation of momentum.


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Music - Water Please - GrandBankss

Students learn about gear ratios and power by operating toy mechanical cranes of differing gear ratios. They attempt to pick up objects with various masses to witness how much power must be applied to the system to oppose the force of gravity. They learn about the concept of gear ratio and practice calculating gear ratios on worksheets, discovering that smaller gear ratios are best for picking objects up quickly, and larger gear ratios make it easier to lift heavy objects.

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Music: Inevitable - Diamond Ortiz

In this hands-on activity, students explore the phenomenon of static electricity by engaging in the science and engineering practices of asking questions and planning and carrying out investigations. Students enact a “human diagram” to model the Bohr model of an atom. Then, in pairs, they charge a comb (on hair) and use it to attract an O-shaped piece of cereal and then watch the cereal jump away when it touches the comb. They do the same with Styrofoam pellets, observing them pulling towards a charged comb, then leaping back to the table. Through these investigations, students explore the disciplinary core ideas of electric and magnetic forces, the crosscutting concept of cause and effect, and they make sense of static electricity and what’s going on at the atomic level.

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Music - Educated Man

Students dream up and draw their own designs for futuristic and fanciful flying machines. They learn that doodling, sketching and brainstorming are related to the invention process, and about the early inventions that contributed to the history of flight and the state of modern aircraft. For brainstorming practice, they generate ideas for creative alternate uses for every day objects. Then, guided by a worksheet, they use their imaginations and apply their knowledge of aircraft design and the forces acting on them (gained from the previous lessons in the Airplanes unit) to design and create their own innovative flying machine models made from classroom construction and recycled

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Music: Night at the Dance Hall

Students learn about isometric drawings and practice sketching on triangle-dot paper the shapes they make using multiple simple cubes. They also learn how to use coded plans to envision objects and draw them on triangle-dot paper. A PowerPoint® presentation, worksheet and triangle-dot (isometric) paper printout are provided. This activity is part of a multi-activity series towards improving spatial visualization skills.

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Music: Coffee Stains-Riot

Students learn about civil engineers and work through each step of the engineering design process in two mini-activities that prepare them for a culminating challenge to design and build the tallest straw tower possible, given limited time and resources. First they examine the profiles of the tallest 20 towers in the world. Then in the first mini-activity (one-straw tall tower), student pairs each design a way to keep one straw upright with the least amount of tape and fewest additional straws. In the second mini-activity (no "fishing pole"), the pairs determine the most number of straws possible to construct a vertical straw tower before it bends at 45 degrees—resembling a fishing pole shape. Students learn that the taller a structure, the more tendency it has to topple over. In the culminating challenge (tallest straw tower), student pairs apply what they have learned and follow the steps of the engineering design process to create the tallest possible model tower within time, material and building constraints, mirroring the real-world engineering experience of designing solutions within constraints. Three worksheets are provided, for each of two levels, grades K-2 and grades 3-5. The activity scales up to school-wide, district or regional competition scale.

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Music: Someone Your Own Size - RW Smith

Through multi-trial experiments, students are able to see and measure something that is otherwise invisible to them—seeing plants breathe. Student groups are given two small plants of native species and materials to enclose them after watering with colored water. After being enclosed for 10, 20 and 30 minutes, teams collect and measure the condensed water from the plants' "breathing," and then calculate the rates at which the plants breathe. A plant's breath is known as transpiration, which is the flow of water from the ground where it is taken up by roots (plant uptake) and then lost through the leaves. Students plot volume/time data for three different native plant species, determine and compare their transpiration rates to see which had the highest reaction rate and consider how a plant's unique characteristics (leaf surface area, transpiration rate) might figure into engineers' designs for neighborhood stormwater management plans.

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Music: Valerie Plain - Rondo Brothers

Students explore the concept of biodegradability by building and observing model landfills to test the decomposition of samples of everyday garbage items. They collect and record experiment observations over five days, seeing for themselves what happens to trash when it is thrown "away" in a landfill environment. This shows them the difference between biodegradable and non-biodegradable and serves to introduce them to the idea of composting. Students also learn about the role of engineering in solid waste management.

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Music: Undeniable

Students learn about the mathematical characteristics and reflective property of ellipses by building their own elliptical-shaped pool tables. After a slide presentation introduction to ellipses, student “engineering teams” follow the steps of the engineering design process to develop prototypes, which they research, plan, sketch, build, test, refine, and then demonstrate, compare and share with the class. Using these tables as models to explore the geometric shape of ellipses, they experience how particles rebound off the curved ellipse sides and what happens if particles travel through the foci. They learn that if a particle travels through one focal point, then it will travel through the second focal point regardless of what direction the particle travels.

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Music: So Bueno by The 126ers

In this engineering design activity, students build models of natural sources of water. As they move through the design process, students differentiate between natural sources of water (such as rivers or lakes) and human-made sources of water, such as reservoirs or canals. Students learn how engineers can study natural sources of water to create better water delivery systems that benefit society.
This engineering curriculum aligns to Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

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Music: Bella Bella Beat - Nana Kwabena

Students explore the use of wind power in the design, construction and testing of "sail cars," which, in this case, are little wheeled carts with masts and sails that are powered by the moving air generated from a box fan. The scientific method is reviewed and reinforced with the use of controls and variables, and the engineering design process is explored. The focus of the activity is on renewable energy, as well as the design, testing and redesign of small cars made from household materials. The activity (and an extension worksheet) includes the use of kinematic equations using distance, time traveled and speed to enforce exponents and decimals.

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Music: Deep Hat

In this activity, students reinforce their understanding of compound machines by building a catapult. This compound machine consists of a lever and a wheel-and-axel. Catapults have been designed by engineers for a variety of purposes — from lifting boulders into the air for warfare to human beings for entertainment; the projectiles in this activity are grapes for a magic act. Given the building materials, students design and build their catapult to launch a grape a certain distance.

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Music: Sky Scraper - Geographer

Students make two different formulations of imitation Silly Putty with varying degrees of cross-linking. They witness how changes in the degree of cross-linking influence the putty properties.

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Music: Sky Scraper - Geographer