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.
This engineering curriculum aligns to Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

View the full activity on TeachEngineering:
https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/b

TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit https://www.teachengineering.org/ for more

Music - Tyler Kimbell

Mint candies aren’t just a tasty treat; they are useful in learning about engineering concepts! In this activity, students design, build and test model race cars made from simple materials (lifesaver-shaped candies, plastic drinking straws, Popsicle sticks, index cards, tape) as a way to explore independent, dependent and control variables. They measure the changes in distance travelled with the addition of mass to the vehicles. Students also practice the steps of the engineering design process by brainstorming, planning, building, testing, and improving their "mint-mobiles."

View the full activity on TeachEngineering:
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: Jazz Apricot - Joey Pecoraro

A main concern of shoe engineers is creating shoes that provide the right amount of arch support to prevent (or fix) common gait misalignments that lead to injury. During this activity, students look at their own footprints and determine whether they have either of the two most prominent gait misalignments: overpronation (collapsing arches) or supination (high arches). Knowing the shape of a person's foot, and their natural arch movement is necessary to design shoes to fix these gain alignments.

View the full activity on TeachEngineering:
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: Bicycle Reunited

Students apply the mechanical advantages and problem-solving capabilities of six types of simple machines (wedge, wheel and axle, lever, inclined plane, screw, pulley) as they discuss modern structures in the spirit of the engineers and builders of the great pyramids. While learning the steps of the engineering design process, students practice teamwork, creativity and problem solving.

View the full lesson on TeachEngineering:
https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/lessons/view/cub_

Teach Engineering has over 1,900 FREE lessons and activities. Visit http://www.TeachEngineering.org for more!

Students collect data from a sugar-level simulation by categorizing different food and drink solutions and measuring their impact on glucose levels. They then use this data to train a machine learning model using the "Machine Learning for Kids" platform. By inputting and organizing their data, students train the model to predict blood sugar responses and classify meals as either healthy or unhealthy. They test their model’s accuracy with new inputs and make adjustments to improve its performance. Through this hands-on process, students gain an understanding of how machine learning works, the importance of high-quality data, and how these technologies can support real-world health applications, such as managing diabetes.

View the full lesson on TeachEngineering:
https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/r

TeachEngineering has over 1,900 FREE lessons and activities. Visit http://www.TeachEngineering.org for more!

Cold Funk Funkorama - Kevin MacLeod

Students test the insulation properties of different materials by timing how long it takes ice cubes to melt in the presence of various insulating materials. Students learn about the role that thermal insulation materials can play in reducing heat transfer by conduction, convection and radiation, as well as the design and implementation of insulating materials in construction and engineering.

View the full activity at 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: Cali Buzz - Yung Logos

How can you tell if harmful bacteria are growing in your food? Students learn to culture bacteria in order to examine ground meat and bagged salad samples, looking for common foodborne bacteria such as E. coli or salmonella. After 2-7 days of incubation, they observe and identify the resulting bacteria. Based on their first-hand experiences conducting this conventional biological culturing process, they consider its suitability in meeting society's need for ongoing detection of harmful bacteria in its food supply, leading them to see the need for bioengineering inventions for rapid response bio-detection systems.

View the full activity on TeachEngineering: https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/curriculum/browse

TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit http://www.TeachEngineering.org for more!

Music: Jazzy Frenchy- Bensound.com

Students learn about the engineering design process and how products may be reinvented to serve new purposes. Working in groups, students design a type of slime. After creating their slime, the teacher turns out the lights and the students see that the slime they made actually glows in the dark! The groups investigate how to take their new discoveries and apply them to industrial applications. Once they have determined a use for their glowing slime, each group must build/design and test their product outside of class. The groups then create advertisements (videos, brochures, performances, etc.) for their new product(s) or application(s), and present to the judges for review similar to a “Shark Tank” environment.

View the full activity at TeachEngineering:
https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/makerchallenges/v

TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit http://www.TeachEngineering.org for more!

Music: Aimless Amos

Three short, hands-on, in-class demos expand students' understanding of energy. First, using peanuts and heat, students see how the human body uses food to make energy. Then, students create paper snake mobiles to explore how heat energy can cause motion. Finally, students determine the effect that heat energy from the sun (or a lamp) has on temperature by placing pans of water in different locations.

View the full activity at TeachEngineering:
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: Turn Up Burn Up - Diamond Ortiz

Students act as mining engineers and simulate ore mining production by using chocolate chip cookies. They focus on the cost-benefit analysis of the chocolate ore production throughout the simulation, which helps them understand the cost of production. As students “mine” with tools such as paperclips and toothpicks, they keep records of their costs—land (cookie), equipment used, cookie size before and after production, and time spent. While the goal is to make as much profit as possible, other costs and goals are taken into consideration—as in real-world mining engineering. For example, mining engineers also consider the resulting amount of destruction to the lithosphere when deciding the best method to obtain ore. Thus, a line item for land reclamation cost is included from the beginning. A provided worksheet serves as a profit and loss statement.

View the full activity at TeachEngineering:
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

The Teach Engineering Digital Library is an educational resource featuring standards-aligned, design-rich curricula to help educators foster design thinking.

Put the ‘E’ in STEM by making applied science, technology, and math come alive through engineering design and design thinking.

Students explore the basics of DC circuits, analyzing the light from light bulbs when connected in series and parallel circuits. Ohm's law and the equation for power dissipated by a circuit are the two primary equations used to explore circuits connected in series and parallel. Students measure and see the effect of power dissipation from the light bulbs. Kirchhoff's voltage law is used to show how two resistor elements add in series, while Kirchhoff's current law is used to explain how two resistor elements add when in parallel. Students also learn how electrical engineers apply this knowledge to solve problems. Power dissipation is particularly important with the introduction of LED bulbs and claims of energy efficiency, and understanding how power dissipation is calculated helps when evaluating these types of claims. This activity is designed to introduce students to the concepts needed to understand how circuits can be reduced algebraically.

View the full lesson on TeachEngineering:
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: Life_of_Riley
Artist: Kevin MacLeod

After watching a short online video that recaps the enormous scale of accumulating plastic waste in our oceans, student teams are challenged to devise a method to remove the most plastic microbeads from a provided commercial personal care product—such as a facial cleanser or body wash. They brainstorm filtering methods ideas and design their own specific procedures that use teacher-provided supplies (coffee filters, funnels, plastic syringes, vinyl tubing, water, plastic bags) to extract the microplastics as efficiently as possible. The research and development student teams compare the final masses of their extracted microbeads to see which filter solutions worked best. Students suggest possible future improvements to their filter designs.

View the full activity at 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: It's All Happening - Huma-Huma

Students learn the history of the waterwheel and common uses for water turbines today. They explore kinetic energy by creating their own experimental waterwheel from a two-liter plastic bottle. They investigate the transformations of energy involved in turning the blades of a hydro-turbine into work, and experiment with how weight affects the rotational rate of the waterwheel. Students also discuss and explore the characteristics of hydroelectric plants.

View the full activity on TeachEngineering: 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: Inevitable

Dive into the rapidly emerging world of machine learning, where students come to understand the first attempts at developing the perceptron model—a simplified model of a biological neuron. Students also learn about the logic of the perceptron model and its limitations, which led to the development of multi-layer networks.

View the full lesson on TeachEngineering:
https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/lessons/view/mis-

Teach Engineering has over 1,900 FREE lessons and activities. Visit http://www.TeachEngineering.org for more!

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.

View the full activity at TeachEngineering:
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: Jazz Apricot

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.

View the full activity on TeachEngineering: 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: Fun - Vibe Tracks

In this two-part activity, students design and build Rube Goldberg machines. This open-ended challenge employs the engineering design process and may have a pre-determined purpose, such as rolling a marble into a cup from a distance, or let students decide the purposes.

View the full activity on TeachEngineering: 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: Deep Hat - Vibe Tracks

Student teams design and then create small-size models of working filter systems to simulate multi-stage wastewater treatment plants. Drawing from assorted provided materials (gravel, pebbles, sand, activated charcoal, algae, coffee filters, cloth) and staying within a (hypothetical) budget, teams create filter systems within 2-liter plastic bottles to clean the teacher-made simulated wastewater (soap, oil, sand, fertilizer, coffee grounds, beads). They aim to remove the water contaminants while reclaiming the waste material as valuable resources. They design and build the filtering systems, redesigning for improvement, and then measuring and comparing results (across teams): reclaimed quantities, water quality tests, costs, experiences and best practices. They conduct common water quality tests (such as turbidity, pH, etc., as determined by the teacher) to check the water quality before and after treatment.

View the full activity at TeachEngineering:
https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/u

TeachEngineering has over 1,500 FREE lessons and activities. Visit https://www.teachengineering.org/ for more!

Music: Awaken - Anno Domini Beats

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.

View the full activity on TeachEngineering:
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: Deep Hat