In this activity, students act as environmental engineers involved with the clean up of a toxic spill. Using bioremediation as the process, students select which bacteria they will use to eat up the pollutant spilled. Students learn how engineers use bioremediation to make organism degrade harmful chemicals. Engineers must make sure bacteria have everything they need to live and degrade contaminants for bioremediation to happen. Students learn about the needs of living things by setting up an experiment with yeast. The scientific method is reinforced as students must design the experiment themselves making sure they include a control and complete parts of a formal lab report.

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Music: Sugar - Vibe Tracks

What do plants need? Students examine the effects of light and air on green plants, learning the processes of photosynthesis and transpiration. Student teams plant seeds, placing some in sunlight and others in darkness. They make predictions about the outcomes and record ongoing observations of the condition of the stems, leaves and roots. Then, several healthy plants are placed in glass jars with lids overnight. Condensation forms, illustrating the process of transpiration, or the release of moisture to the atmosphere by plants.
This engineering curriculum aligns to Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

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Music: Believer

Students follow the steps of the engineering design process while learning more about assistive devices and biomedical engineering applied to basic structural engineering concepts. Their engineering challenge is to design, build and test small-scale portable wheelchair ramp prototypes for fictional clients. They identify suitable materials and demonstrate two methods of representing design solutions (scale drawings and simple models or classroom prototypes). Students test the ramp prototypes using a weighted bucket; successful prototypes meet all the student-generated design requirements, including support of a predetermined weight.

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Music: Sophomore Makeout - Silent Partner

By studying how bees and flowers interact with one another, we can also understand engineering practices related to our environment! In this activity, students engineer a model of a flower to test different materials’ ability to pollinate another flower. In teams of two, students use the engineering design process to create a model of a flower out of construction paper and then test different materials by measuring and recording how much pollen is transferred. While discovering the most efficient material, students determine how the information they gain can help bees pollinate and they better understand the importance of bee conservation.
This engineering curriculum aligns to Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

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music: Daily Beetle

Students learn about and experiment with the concept of surface tension. How can a paper clip "float" on top of water? How can a paper boat be powered by soap in water? How do water striders "walk" on top of water? Why do engineers care about surface tension? Students answer these questions as they investigate surface tension and surfactants.

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Music: Redwood_Highway-Audionautix

Students collect data and apply mathematical modeling, specifically linear approximation, to predict what will happen in a specific situation. In this activity, students collect data to determine the number of Jelly Belly jelly beans it takes to fill up the respective tube. Students plot their data, graph a linear approximation model, and write an equation representing their model. Students use their linear model to predict the number of Jelly Belly jelly beans that are in a similar cylindrical tube with a given height. Students discuss the accuracy of their results and limitations in their model and data collection process. They then apply their predictions to make suggestions to Jelly Belly for potential packaging of jelly beans based on quantity instead of net weight.

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Song: Double_Agent
by: Everet Almond

Student teams design insulated beverage bottles with the challenge to test them to determine which materials (and material thicknesses) work best at insulating hot water to keep it warm for as long as possible. Students test and compare their designs in still air and under a stream of moving air from a house fan.

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Music: Side Steppin

Students see how different levels of surface tension affect water's ability to move. Teams "race" water droplets down tracks made of different materials, making measurements, collecting data, making calculations, graphing results and comparing to their predictions and the properties of each surface, determining which surface exhibits the highest (or lowest) level of surface tension with water. They apply their results to make engineering recommendations for real-world applications.

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Music: Bicycle-Reunited by Kevin MacLeod

Students are introduced to the five fundamental loads: compression, tension, shear, bending and torsion. They learn about the different kinds of stress each force exerts on objects.

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Music: Cats and Gats - Dyalla

Students download the software needed to create Arduino programs and make sure their Arduino microcontrollers work correctly. Then, they connect an LED to the Arduino and type up and upload programs to the Arduino board to 1) make the LED blink on and off and 2) make the LED fade (brighten and then dim). Throughout, students reflect on what they've accomplished by answering questions and modifying the original programs and circuits in order to achieve new outcomes. A design challenge gives students a chance to demonstrate their understanding of actuators and Arduinos; they design a functioning system using an Arduino, at least three actuators and either a buzzer or toy motor. For their designs, students sketch, create and turn in a user's manual for the system (text description, commented program, detailed hardware diagram). Numerous worksheets and handouts are provided.

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Music: Bella Bella Beat - Nana Kwabena

Students use a recipe to prepare a hydrogel gummy snack, which has a similar consistency to that found in a Haribo® gummy product. They must convert the juice and gelatin-based recipe from US customary units to metric units with dimensional analysis conversion. After unit conversion, teams are given different gelatin quantities and design their gummy snacks. Once the candies have solidified, student groups compare the gummy snacks are for viscosity and taste. After a taste test, teams reflect on their experiment and brainstorm ways to iterate a better gummy recipe.

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Music: Whatdafunk - Audionautix

Students investigate the simulated use of solid rocket fuel by using an antacid tablet. They observe the effect that surface area and temperature has on chemical reactions. They also compare the reaction time using two different reactants: water and vinegar. Finally, students report their results in bar graph format. In the continuing hypothetical scenario of this unit, what students learn builds their background knowledge towards designing the best rocket to get their cargo into space.

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Music: Life of Riley - Kevin MacLeod

After reading the story "Dear Mr. Henshaw" by Beverly Cleary, student groups use the engineering design process to create alarm systems to protect something in the classroom, just as the main character Leigh does to protect his lunchbox from thieves. Students learn about alarms and use their creativity to devise multi-step alarm systems to protect their lockers, desk, pets or classroom door. Note: This activity can also be done without reading the Cleary book.

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Music - Elite Syncopations

Accuracy of measurement in navigation depends very much on the situation. If a sailor's target is an island 200 km wide, sailing off center by 10 or 20 km is not a major problem. But, if the island were only 1 km wide, it would be missed if off just the smallest bit. Many of the measurements made while navigating involve angles, and a small error in the angle can translate to a much larger error in position when traveling long distances.

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Music - Thingamajig

Who can engineer the best slime? Beginning with a preset recipe, students make slime, observe it, and then decide on what and how they want to improve it, such as making it stickier or less sticky. Students then make their updated slime by implementing the changes they want to make. They are introduced to product optimization, material science and polymer engineering.

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Music: Comparsa_Latinesque by Kevin MacLeod

The school’s playground is flooded again, and the students cannot go out to recess! Students learn about the different states of matter and how water changes. They use this knowledge, along with research about natural disasters, to come up with an engineering solution that prevents playground flooding. They plan and design a model, test it, and share results. After sharing results, they redesign and complete at least two more trials to find the optimal solution.

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Music: Cold Funk Funkorama

Using common materials (spools, string, soap), students learn how a pulley can be used to easily change the direction of a force, making the moving of large objects easier. They see the difference between fixed and movable pulleys, and the mechanical advantage gained with multiple/combined pulleys. They also learn the many ways engineers use pulleys for everyday purposes.

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Music: How We Like It - Dan Lebowitz

Students explore the many different ways that engineers provide natural lighting to interior spaces. They analyze various methods of daylighting by constructing model houses from foam core board and simulating the sun with a desk lamp. Teams design a daylighting system for their model houses based on their observations and calculations of the optimal use of available sunlight to their structure.

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Music: Fortunate Son - Silent Partner

In this activity, students simulate the equal and unequal distribution of our renewable resources. Also, they consider the impact of our increasing population upon these resources and how engineers develop technologies to create resources.

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Music: Cosmos- Silent Partner

From brainstorming ideas to testing prototypes, iterating through the design process helps engineers to develop more creative products and processes.

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Music: Italian Afternoon - Twin Musicom

You’re free to use this song in any of your videos, but you must include the following in your video description:
Italian Afternoon by Twin Musicom is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Artist: http://www.twinmusicom.org/