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.

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Can you communicate without electricity? In this activity, students explore a problem in which a school’s power has gone out and they need to deliver an important message to a neighboring first grade classroom. However, they must stay within the following constraints: they cannot use cell phones and they have to stay in their classroom while doing so. Students research and use a variety of tools and materials to build, test, and retest a device that communicates sound the most clearly while learning about and demonstrating how sound causes vibrations.
This engineering curriculum aligns to Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

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Music:

Civil engineers design structures such as buildings, dams, highways and bridges. Student teams explore the field of engineering by making bridges using spaghetti as their primary building material. Then they test their bridges to see how much weight they can carry before breaking.

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Music: Undeniable - Vibe Tracks

Students control small electric motors with Arduino microcontrollers to make simple sticky-note spinning fans and then explore other variations of basic motor systems. Through this exercise, students create circuits that include transistors acting as switches. They alter and experiment with given basic motor code, learning about the Arduino analogWrite command and pulse width modulation (PWM). Students learn the motor system nuances that enable them to create their own motor-controlled projects. They are challenged to make their motor systems respond to temperature or light, to control speed with knob or soft potentiometers, and/or make their motors go in reverse (using a motor driver shield or an H-bridge). Electric motors are used extensively in industrial and consumer products and the fundamental principles that students learn can be applied to motors of all shapes and sizes.

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Music: Fuggetaboutit

Using spaghetti and marshmallows, students experiment with different structures to determine which ones are able to handle the greatest amount of load. Their experiments help them to further understand the effects that compression and tension forces have with respect to the strength of structures. Spaghetti cannot hold much tension or compression; therefore, it breaks very easily. Marshmallows handle compression well, but do not hold up to tension.

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Music: Toe Jam - Diamond Ortiz

Students take the concept of etch-a-sketch a step further. Using iron filings, they begin visualizing magnetic field lines. To do so, they use a compass to read the direction of the magnet's magnetic field. Then, as they rotate the filings about the magnet, they observe the behavior of iron filings near the magnet. Finally, students study the behavior of iron filings suspended in mineral oil, which displays the magnetic field in three dimensions.

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Music - Bicycle Reunited by Kevin MacLeod

Student groups rotate through four stations to examine light energy behavior: refraction, magnification, prisms and polarization. They see how a beam of light is refracted (bent) through various transparent mediums. While learning how a magnifying glass works, students see how the orientation of an image changes with the distance of the lens from its focal point. They also discover how a prism works by refracting light and making rainbows. And, students investigate the polar nature of light using sunglasses and polarized light film.

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Music: Side Steppin

In the everyday electrical devices we use — calculators, remote controls and cell phones — a voltage source such as a battery is required to close the circuit and operate the device. In this hands-on activity, students use batteries, wires, small light bulbs and light bulb holders to learn the difference between an open circuit and a closed circuit, and understand that electric current only occurs in a closed circuit.

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Music: Cosmos - Silent Partnet

Students learn how engineers transform wind energy into electrical energy by building their own miniature wind turbines and measuring the electrical current they produce. They explore how design and position affect the electrical energy production.

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Music: Happy Rock - Bensound.com

Students use the associated activity to learn about atoms and their structure (protons, electrons, neutrons) — the building blocks of matter. They see how scientific discoveries about atoms and molecules influence new technologies developed by engineers.

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In this lesson, students learn about work as defined by physical science and see that work is made easier through the use of simple machines. Already encountering simple machines everyday, students will learn about their widespread uses in improving everyday life. This lesson serves as the starting point for the Simple Machines Unit.

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Students examine the motion of pendulums and come to understand that the longer the pendulum string, the fewer the number of swings in a given time interval. Student groups conduct an experiment, collecting and graphing data on a worksheet. They see that changing the weight on the pendulum does not have an effect on the period

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music -The_Temperature_of_the_Air_on_the_Bow_of_the_Kaleetan

Student groups construct simple conductivity probes and then integrate them into two different circuits to test the probe behavior in solutions of varying conductivity (salt water, sugar water, distilled water, tap water). The activity culminates with student-designed experiments that utilize the constructed probes. The focus is to introduce students to the fabrication of the probe and expose them to two different ways to integrate the probe to obtain qualitative and quantitative measurements, while considering the application and utility of a conductivity probe within an engineering context. A provided handout guides teams through the process: background reading and questions; probe fabrication including soldering; probe testing and data gathering (including circuit creation on breadboard); probe connection to Arduino (including circuit creation and code entry) and a second round of testing and data gathering; design and conduct their own lab experiments that use the probes; online electrolyte/non-electrolyte reading, short video, comprehension check and analysis questions.

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Music: Go To Town - Silent Partner

Students explore the effect of chemical erosion on statues and monuments. They use chalk to see what happens when limestone is placed in liquids with different pH values. They also learn several engineering approaches to reduce the effects of acid rain.

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Music: Life of Riley - Kevin MacLeod

Life of Riley by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)
Source: http://incompetech.com/music/r....oyalty-free/index.ht
Artist: http://incompetech.com/

Students investigate how sound travels through string and air. First, they analyze the sound waves with a paper cup attached to a string. Then, they combine the string and cup with a partner to model a string telephone. Finally, they are given a design challenge to redesign the string telephone for distance. They think about their model as it compares a modern telephone and the impact the invention of the telephone has had on society.

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Music: Daily Beetle - Kevin MacLeod

Students learn how paper is made. Working together, student teams make their own paper. This activity introduces students to recycling; what it is, its value and benefits, and how it affects their lives.

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Music: Coffee Stains - Riot

Students build their own small-scale model roller coasters using pipe insulation and marbles, and then analyze them using physics principles learned in the associated lesson. They examine conversions between kinetic and potential energy and frictional effects to design roller coasters that are completely driven by gravity. A class competition using different marbles types to represent different passenger loads determines the most innovative and successful roller coasters.

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Music: Moose - Bensound.com

As an introduction to analyzing sinusoidal waves, students learn how to use a Jupyter Notebook. They learn how to identify the frequency, wavelength, amplitude, period, and phase of a simple sinusoidal waveform. As they learn how to label the parts and properties of the waves, they connect these characteristics of waves to various real-world wave examples such as ocean waves, visible light, and sound. Students will examine a mathematical model of a sinusoidal waveform and connect each variable to its corresponding wave property. They will manipulate each variable of the model using Python code in a Jupyter Notebook and examine the effect of changing each variable on the resulting waveform.
This engineering curriculum aligns to Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

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Music: Aimless Amos

In this activity, students will experience echolocation themselves. They actually try echolocation by wearing blindfolds while another student makes snapping noises in front of, behind, or to the side of them.

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Music: Stuck In The Air - The Tower of Light

To learn how friction affects motion, students explore how different textures provide varying amounts of friction to objects moving across them. They build a tool to measure the amount of friction between a note card and various surfaces by measuring the distance that a rubber band stretches. They experiment with a range of materials to determine which provides the least/most friction.

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Music: Morning Mist- Quincas Moreira