Working as if they are engineers who work for (the hypothetical) Build-a-Toy Workshop company, students apply their imaginations and the engineering design process to design and build prototype toys with moving parts. They set up electric circuits using batteries, wire and motors. They create plans for project material expenses to meet a budget.

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Music: Fun - Vibe Tracks

Students are introduced to the differences between acids and bases and how to use indicators, such as pH paper and red cabbage juice, to distinguish between them. They learn why it is important for engineers to understand acids and bases.

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Music: Bubblegum Ballgame - JR Tundra

Students are introduced to the concept and steps of the engineering design process and taught how to apply it. Students first receive some background information about biomedical engineering (aka bioengineering). Then they learn about material selection and material properties by using a provided guide. In small groups, students learn of their design challenge (improve a cast for a broken arm), brainstorm solutions, are given materials and create prototypes. To finish, teams communicate their design solutions through class poster presentations.

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Music: Dragonfly

Students learn about various natural hazards and specific methods engineers use to prevent these hazards from becoming natural disasters. They study a hypothetical map of an area covered with natural hazards and decide where to place natural disaster prevention devices by applying their critical thinking skills and an understanding of the causes of natural disasters.
This engineering curriculum aligns to Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

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Music: EDM Detection Mode

Students learn the metric units engineers use to measure mass, distance (or length) and volume. They make estimations using these units and compare their guesses with actual values. To introduce the concepts, the teacher needs access to a meter stick, a one-liter bottle, a glass container that measures milliliters and a gram scale.

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Students act as structural engineers and learn about forces and load distributions as they follow the steps of the engineering design process to design and build small-scale bridges using wooden tongue depressors and glue. Teams brainstorm ideas that meet the size and material design constraints and create prototype bridges of the most promising solutions. They test their bridges to see how much weight they can hold until they break and then determine which have the highest strength-to-weight ratios. They examine the prototype failures to identify future improvements. This activity is part of a unit in which multiple activities are brought together for an all-day school/multi-school concluding “engineering field day” competition.

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Music: Undeniable - Text Me Records / Bobby Renz

Students use the engineering design process while learning about accessibility for people with physical disabilities in Egypt. Students are challenged to create a reusable prototype to help a wheelchair table tennis team pick up ping pong balls. Before building their prototypes, students research the trash and waste problem in Egypt, compiling a list of sustainable materials that can be used to build their devices. Students then individually brainstorm and plan at least two different devices before coming together in teams to develop one group prototype design. After building, testing, and improving their prototypes, student groups present their prototypes to the class.

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Daily Beetle - Kevin MacLeod

Air is one of Earth's most precious resources, and we need to take care of it in order to preserve the environment and protect human health. To this end, students develop their understanding of visible air pollutants with an incomplete combustion demonstration, a "smog in a jar" demonstration, and by building simple particulate matter collectors.

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Music: Blue_Macaw - Quincas Moreira

Students design and build a model city powered by the sun! They learn about the benefits of solar power, and how architectural and building engineers integrate photovoltaic panels into the design of buildings.

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Music: About That Oldie - Vibe Tracks

This activity simulates the extraction of limited, nonrenewable resources from a "mine," so students can experience first-hand how resource extraction becomes more difficult over time. Students gather data and graph their results to determine the peak in resource extraction. They learn about the limitations of nonrenewable resources, and how these resources are currently used.

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Music: Blue Macaw - Quincas Moreira

Student teams creatively construct mobiles using hangers and assorted materials and objects while exploring the principles of balance and center of mass. They build complex, free-hanging structures by balancing pieces with different lengths, weights, shapes and sizes.

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Music: City of Jewels - Density & Time

Students explore the properties of composites using inexpensive materials and processing techniques. They create beams using Laffy Taffy and water, and a choice of various reinforcements (pasta, rice, candies) and fabricating temperatures. Student groups compete for the highest strength beam. They measure flexure strength with three-point bend tests and calculations. Results are compared and discussed to learn how different materials and reinforcement shapes affect material properties and performance.

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Music: Straighty Baby - Audionautix
Straighty Baby by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Artist: http://audionautix.com/

Students conduct a simple experiment to see how the water level changes in a beaker when a lump of clay sinks in the water and when the same lump of clay is shaped into a bowl that floats in the water. They notice that the floating clay displaces more water than the sinking clay does, perhaps a surprising result. Then they determine the mass of water that is displaced when the clay floats in the water. A comparison of this mass to the mass of the clay itself reveals that they are approximately the same.

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Music: Thingamajig- Audionautix

Posed with a paradigmatic engineering problem, students consider and explore mathematical algorithms and/or geometric concepts to devise possible solutions. The problem: How should a robotic vacuum move in order to best clean a floor of unknown shape and dimensions? They grapple with what could be a complex problem by brainstorming ideas, presenting the best idea for a solution and analyzing all presented solutions, and then are introduced to an elegant solution. Rather than elaborately calculating the most efficient route and keeping track of which tiles the robot has visited, a random number generator determines which direction the robot will take when it hits a barrier. Students are able to visually confirm how an unfamiliar programming concept (a random number generator) can make for a simple and efficient program that causes an EV3 robot (that is suitably equipped) to clean a bare floor. Then students think of other uses for random numbers.

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Music: London Bayou - ALBIS

Students are introduced to renewable energy, including its relevance and importance to our current and future world. They learn the mechanics of how wind turbines convert wind energy into electrical energy and the concepts of lift and drag. Then they apply real-world technical tools and techniques to design their own aerodynamic wind turbines that efficiently harvest the most wind energy. Specifically, teams each design a wind turbine propeller attachment. They sketch rotor blade ideas, create CAD drawings (using Google SketchUp) of the best designs and make them come to life by fabricating them on a 3D printer. They attach, test and analyze different versions and/or configurations using a LEGO wind turbine, fan and an energy meter. At activity end, students discuss their results and the most successful designs, the aerodynamics characteristics affecting a wind turbine's ability to efficiently harvest wind energy, and ideas for improvement. The activity is suitable for a class/team competition. Example 3D rotor blade designs are provided.

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Music: Straighty Baby - Audionautix

Straighty Baby by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Artist: http://audionautix.com/

Students learn about the concept of pushing, as well as the relationship between force and mass. Students practice measurement skills using pan scales and rulers to make predictions about mass and distance. A LEGO® MINDSTORMS® robot is used to test their hypotheses. By the end of the activity, students have a better understanding of robotics, mass and friction and the concept of predicting.

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Music: Dream of a Day

Students use their understanding of projectile physics and fluid dynamics to find the water pressure in water guns. By measuring the range of the water jets, they are able to calculate the theoretical pressure. Students create graphs to analyze how the predicted pressure relates to the number of times they pump the water gun before shooting.

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Music: New Land

In this hands-on activity, students explore the electrical force that takes place between two objects. Each student builds an electroscope and uses the device to draw conclusions about objects' charge intensity. Students also determine what factors influence electric force.

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Music: Weekend In The City - Silent Partner

Students conduct an experiment to determine the relationship between the speed of a wooden toy car at the bottom of an incline and the height at which it is released. They observe how the photogate-based speedometer instrument "clocks" the average speed of an object (the train). They gather data and create graphs plotting the measured speed against start height. After the experiment, as an optional extension activity, students design brakes to moderate the speed of the cart at the bottom of the hill to within a specified speed range.

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Music: Educated Man - Max McFerren

Students design their own logos, pictures or other graphic images and then use handheld GPS receivers to map them out. They write out the image on a field or playground, walk the route, and log GPS data. Displaying the collected data on the GPS receiver screen results in the finished artwork. The process requires students to use geometry, sketch, measure distances and make scaling calculations, and familiarizes them with technological devices. A student worksheet is provided.

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Music: Comparsa Latinesque

Students observe a model waterwheel to investigate the transformations of energy involved in turning the blades of a hydro-turbine. They work as engineers to create model waterwheels while considering resources such as time and materials, in their designs. Students also discuss and explore the characteristics of hydropower plants.

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Music: Sunny - Bensound.com

Refreshed with an understanding of the six simple machines; screw, wedge, pully, incline plane, wheel and axle, and lever, student groups receive materials and an allotted amount of time to act as mechanical engineers to design and create machines that can complete specified tasks. For the competition, they choose from pre-determined goal options such as: 1) dumping goldfish into a bowl, 2) popping a balloon, or 3) dropping mint candies into soda pop (creating a fizzy reaction). Students demonstrate their functioning contraptions to the class, earning points for using all six simple machines, successful transitions from one chain reaction to the next, and completion of the end goal.

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Music: Stand - Anno Domini Beats

In this multi-day activity, students explore environments, ecosystems, energy flow and organism interactions by creating a scale model biodome, following the steps of the engineering design process. The Procedure section provides activity instructions for Biodomes unit, lessons 2-6, as students work through Parts 1-6 to develop their model biodome. Subjects include energy flow and food chains, basic needs of plants and animals, and the importance of decomposers. Students consider why a solid understanding of one's environment and the interdependence of an ecosystem can inform the choices we make and the way we engineer our own communities. This activity can be conducted as either a very structured or open-ended design.

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Music: Skinny Leonard - Audionautix

Skinny Leonard by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Artist: http://audionautix.com/

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.

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Music: Jazz Apricot

Students practice their multiplication skills using robots with wheels built from LEGO® MINDSTORMS® kits. They brainstorm distance travelled by the robots without physically measuring distance and then apply their math skills to correctly calculate the distance and compare their guesses with physical measurements. Through this activity, students estimate parameters other than by physically measuring them, practice multiplication, develop measuring skills, and use their creativity to come up with successful solutions.

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Music: Electrodoodle - Kevin MacLeod