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

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 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

Through a teacher-led class demo, students observe a simple water cycle model to better understand its role in pollutant transport. Using kitchen or lab equipment, the demo simulates a point source of pollution in a lake and the resulting environmental consequences—one way in which pollution is affected by the water cycle. A student worksheet is provided.
This engineering curriculum aligns to Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

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

Music: Blue Macaw

Students work in teams to design a tabletop supply organizer inspired by the natural home of an insect species. Their prototype stores the group’s classroom supplies (scissors, crayon boxes, pencils, and glue sticks). In addition to following measurement constraints that apply to their prototype, students must design their supply organizer with the idea that supplies must be easily retrievable and the organizer must be sturdy enough to withstand everyday classroom wear and tear. Students test their prototype in the classroom for a period of 5 days and evaluate its effectiveness.
This engineering curriculum aligns to Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

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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: Educated man

Students engineer surfaces to control and modify friction and grip as they design and build a tabletop game that uses sliding friction as the main component of its mechanics. Students first observe surface roughness on a variety of surface materials using a digital microscope and explore how engineers use surface modifications to manage friction. They then investigate and compare the friction and grip on multiple surface materials using an inclined plane. Applying the concepts of surface roughness and surface modification, students work as engineering teams to create a tabletop game that uses sliding friction as a main game mechanic. Students go through the steps of the engineering design process, from ideation to prototype development. Students test their own games to balance relevant parameters (surface roughness, speed, board design, game rules, etc.) to improve their prototypes. Students review the prototypes of their peers and offer feedback for further improvements.

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Campfire_Song

Students play the role of engineers as they test, design and build Mentos® fountains—a dramatic example of how potential energy (stored energy) can be converted to kinetic energy (motion). They are challenged to work together as a class to optimize the design of the basic soda/candy geyser made by the teacher. To do this, three research teams each investigate how a different variable—nozzle shape, soda temperature, number of candies—affects fountain height. They devise and run experimental tests to determine the best variable values. Then they combine their results to design the highest fountain to compete head-to-head with the teacher's geyser design.

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Music: Morning Mist

Students come to understand the basics of engineering associated with the use, selection, and properties of fabrics. A wide variety of natural and synthetic fibers are used in our clothing, home furnishings and in our travel and sports equipment. The specific material chosen for each application depends on how closely the properties of the material match the design needs. This activity focuses on the different characteristics of fabrics and shows students how natural and synthetic fabrics differ from one another. Students weigh the advantages and disadvantages of fabrics when considering the appropriate fabric to be used.

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https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/f

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Music - Thingamajig by Audionautix

Students discover fluid dynamics related to buoyancy through experimentation and optional photography. Using one set of fluids, they make light fluids rise through denser fluids. Using another set, they make dense fluids sink through a lighter fluid. In both cases, they see and record beautiful fluid motion. Activities are also suitable as class demonstrations. The natural beauty of fluid flow opens the door to seeing the beauty of physics in general.

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

Music: Cycles

Students combine art, gaming culture and engineering by fabricating light-up patches to increase youngsters’ visibility at night. The open-ended project is presented as a hypothetical design challenge: Students are engineers who have been asked by a group of parents whose children go out Pokémon hunting at night to create glowing patches that they adhere to clothing or backpacks to help vehicle drivers see the kids in the dark. Student pairs create Pokémon character stencil designs cut from iron-on fabric patches, adding transparent layers for color. Placed over an EL (electroluminescent) panel that is connected to a battery pack, the stencils create glowing designs. Each team creates a circuit, which includes lengthening the EL panel wiring to make it easier to wear. Then they sew/adhere the patches onto hoodies, messenger bags, hats, pockets or other applications they dream up. The project concludes with team presentations as if to an audience of project clients. Keep the project simple by hand cutting and ironing/sewing, or use cutting machines, laser cutters and sewing machines, if available.

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https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/s

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Music: Fig Leaf Rag - Kevin MacLeod

Fig Leaf Rag 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 plant sunflower seeds in plastic cups, and once germinated, expose them to varying light or soil moisture conditions. They measure the seedlings' growth every few days using non-standard measurement (inch cubes). After a few weeks, they compare the growth of plants exposed to the different conditions and make comparative bar graphs that they analyze to draw conclusions about plant needs.

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Cold Funk - Funkorama by Kevin MacLeod

In this activity, students discover that the concept of mechanical advantage describes reality fairly well. They act as engineers creating a design for a ramp at a construction site by measuring multiple different inclined planes and calculating the theoretical mechanical advantage versus the actual mechanical advantage of each.

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Music - Daily Beetle By Kevin MacLeod

What are waves? How do engineers engage with the different types of waves to design and build new products? TeachEngineering delves into the real world phenomena of waves and how they show up in our world today!

Music: Cycles

In the continuing (hypothetical) storyline of the Lost in the Amazon unit, students apply the concepts they learned regarding mass, volume and density in the previous activities to design boats to get them out of the jungle.

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Music: EDM Detection Mode - Kevin MacLeod

Students use simple household materials, such as PVC piping and compact mirrors, to construct models of laser-based security systems. The protected object (a "mummified troll" or another treasure of your choosing) is placed "on display" in the center of the modeled room and protected by a laser system that utilizes a laser beam reflected off mirrors to trigger a light trip sensor with alarm.

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

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Music: Double Agent - Everet Almond

Students are introduced to the concept of projectile motion, of which they are often familiar from life experiences, such as playing sports like basketball and baseball, even though they may not understand the physics involved. Students use tabletop-sized robots to build projectile throwers and measure motion using sensors. They compute distances and velocities using simple kinematic equations and confirm their results through measurements by hand. To apply the concept, students calculate the necessary speed of an object to reach a certain distance in a hypothetical scenario: A group of hikers stranded at the bottom of a cliff need food, but rescuers cannot deliver it themselves, so they must devise a way to get the food to the hikers. A student worksheet is provided.

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https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/n

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Music: Dream of a Day - Density & Time

Students learn the basic principles of filtering as well as how to apply digital filters to extract part of an audio signal by using an interactive online demo website. They apply this knowledge in order to isolate a voice recording from a heavily noise-contaminated sound wave. After completing the associated lesson, expect students to be able to attempt (and many successfully finish) this activity with minimal help from the instructor.

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https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/activities/view/c

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music - water please

For this maker challenge, students become biomedical engineers who design, create, and test a medical device that measures a patient’s pulse using a microcontroller, LED, and light sensor. Students use data collected from the device they build to determine how to best visualize the results, so that a doctor can view the patient’s pulse on the computer screen. During the challenge, students learn about basic coding, the capabilities of microcontrollers, how sensors gather data, how the human circulatory system works, and how to plot real data. Finally, students are challenged to make their systems portable so that they create wearable health technology. This is a great project for a high school senior design team project.

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https://www.teachengineering.o....rg/makerchallenges/v

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Music: Komputo - Francis Preve

In the culminating activity of the unit, students explore and apply their knowledge of forces, friction, acceleration and gravity in a two-part experiment. First, student groups measure the average acceleration of a textbook pulled along a table by varying weights (with optional extensions, such as with the addition of a pulley or an inclined plane). Then, with a simple modification to the same experimental setup, teams test different surfaces for the effects of friction, graphing and analyzing their results. Students also consider the real-world applications for high- and low-friction surfaces for different situations and purposes, seeing how forces play a role in engineering design and material choices.

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Music - Brightly Fancy Oddities

Students use a spring scale to drag an object such as a ceramic coffee cup along a table top or the floor. The spring scale allows them to measure the frictional force that exists between the moving cup and the surface it slides on. By modifying the bottom surface of the cup, students find out what kinds of surfaces generate more or less friction.

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Music: Coffee Stains, Riot