Most Shared Curriculum

Students design, build, and test mousetrap cars as they apply the Engineering Design Process (EDP) in this individual engineering design challenge. After researching design ideas, students build and test their mousetrap car prototypes (first model). Students then iterate (modify) their design and make any necessary modifications. While students work individually to make their mousetrap cars, they should collaborate with their peers to share information and make suggestions on how to improve and/or fix each other’s initial constructions. Students test their cars in a friendly class Mousetrap Car Competition to determine which car design travels the farthest distance (Note: students can also test which car travels a set distance the fastest).

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.

Water is essential to life. Understanding how the water cycle works, the importance of water as a natural resource, and how our household water cycle functions is essential knowledge for everyone. Through a range of water-based explorations and the engineering design process, students learn about the water cycle and how engineers manage it.

Students simulate the spread of a virus such as HIV through a population by "sharing" (but not drinking) the water in a plastic cup with several classmates. Although invisible, the water in a few of the cups has already be tainted with the "virus" (sodium carbonate). After all the students have shared their liquids, the contents of the cups are tested for the virus with phenolphthalein, a chemical that causes a striking color change in the presence of sodium carbonate. Students then set about trying to determine which of their classmates were the ones originally infected with the virus.

In this lesson, students are introduced to the five types of renewable energy resources by engaging in various activities to help them understand the transformation of energy (solar, water and wind) into electricity. Students explore the different roles engineers who work in renewable energy fields have in creating a sustainable environment – an environment that contributes to greater health, happiness and safety.

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.

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/nonelectrolyte reading, short video, comprehension check and analysis questions.

Students design and build small catapults to launch candy pieces.

Students explore the physics exploited by engineers in designing today's roller coasters, including potential and kinetic energy, friction and gravity. First, they learn that all true roller coasters are completely driven by the force of gravity and that the conversion between potential and kinetic energy is essential to all roller coasters. Second, they consider the role of friction in slowing down cars in roller coasters. Finally, they examine the acceleration of roller coaster cars as they travel around the track. During the associated activity, students design, build and analyze model roller coasters they make using foam tubing and marbles (as the cars).

Student teams investigate the properties of electromagnets. They create their own small electromagnets and experiment with ways to change their strength to pick up more paperclips. Students learn about ways that engineers use electromagnets in everyday applications.

Students begin to make sense of the phenomenon of electricity through learning about circuits. Students use the disciplinary core idea of using evidence to construct an explanation as they learn that charge movement through a circuit depends on the resistance and arrangement of the circuit components. Students also explore the disciplinary core ideas and crosscutting concepts of energy and energy transfer in the context of energy from a battery. In one associated hands-on activity, students build and investigate the characteristics of series circuits. In another activity, students design and build flashlights.

In this hands-on activity, students investigate different methods—aeration and filtering—for removing pollutants from water. Working in teams, they design, build and test their own water filters—essentially conducting their own "dirty water projects." A guiding data collection worksheet is provided.

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.

The “renew-a-bead game” provides youngsters with a quantitative illustration of how non-renewable resources are depleted while renewable resources continue to provide energy. Student pairs remove beads—representing units of renewable and non-renewable energy—from a bag—representing a country. A certain number of beads are removed from the bag each "year." At some point, no non-renewable (fossil fuel) energy beads remain. Since groups/countries have different ratios of renewable and non-renewable energy beads in their bags, they compare the remaining beads and time when they ran out of energy to see the value of utilizing a greater proportion of renewable resources as a sustainable energy approach. A student worksheet with instructions, data collection table and discussion questions is provided.

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.