Recently Added Curriculum

Metadata is an important tool used to organize, calculate, and log information. In this activity, students become detectives as they learn to extract metadata from digital images, analyze the metadata and locate when and where the images were taken. Students gain knowledge on the use of metadata and its application, from engineering to law enforcement. From this activity, students also learn to be proactive in regulating the pictures they take with their smartphones and minimize their image submissions to the web.

The basic concepts of energy science—work, force, energy and power—and their relationships are explored in this unit. Students investigate the physical properties of energy through work and power and perform energy-related calculations and unit conversions. A hands-on model waterwheel activity engages students in learning how to calculate the amount of power produced and work done.

In this unit, students explore energy conservation and efficiency concepts via multiple modes. Demonstrations explain the forms and states of energy. Energy flow block diagrams record outputs and inputs to determine the efficiency of conversions and simple systems. The law of conservation of energy and efficiency. Students evaluate the energy consumption in a household and explore potential ways to reduce energy use.

This mini-unit focuses on the importance of energy in our lives, and the need to consider how and why we consume the energy we do. The associated activities build students’ general understanding of energy system concepts, including the relationship between energy sources (non-renewable and renewable) and consumer energy choices and use.

Fossil fuels powered the Industrial Revolution, and the use of coal, petroleum, and natural gas has extensive and long-term impacts on the environment and society. This unit investigates fossil fuels as a non-renewable energy source. Students build an understanding of what fossil fuels are, where they are sourced, and how humans use them for energy through lessons and associated activities.

The sun provides earth with abundant light energy, and we can convert this solar energy into electricity using solar panels. This unit explores solar energy as a renewable energy source. Through engaging activities, students investigate the principles of light energy and design, build and test solar-powered ovens, water heaters, and a mini-city.

Creating sustainable energy is a challenge that engineers are helping solve to meet the world's need for clean and consistent power sources. This unit explores water as a renewable energy source. Students explore aspects of hydropower and its potential-to-kinetic energy transformation through water-based activities including designing, building and testing water waterwheels (water turbines).

Creating sustainable energy is a challenge that engineers are helping solve to meet the world's need for clean and consistent power sources. This unit explores wind as a renewable energy source. Students explore aspects of wind power including designing, building, and testing anemometers and wind turbines (windmills).

Electrical phenomena are important and widespread in the natural world, and often occur unnoticed in our daily lives. This unit builds student understanding of the movement of energy at the electron level to creates the electricity that powers our world. Electrical energy (charge, voltage, current, resistance, conductivity) is explored via hands-on activities using basic circuits; and the relationship between power grids and blackouts examines our reliance on electricity.

What are phenomena associated with sound? Sound is a form of energy that is created when an object vibrates and causes the movement of air molecules (sound waves). In this unit, students explore elements of sound—sound waves, pitch, volume, frequency and transmission—with a variety of hands-on activities.

What are the basics for understanding heat phenomena? Heat energy, also called thermal energy, is the energy an object or substance has based on the movement of its molecules (more movement creates more heat). This unit engages students in interactive investigations to understand the fundamentals of thermal energy—temperature, heat capacity, and heat transfer (conduction, convection and radiation).

Energy, in all its forms, is an essential part of our daily lives. This unit offers an overview of the types, sources, uses, and conservation of energy. Students enhance their understanding of energy concepts through quick demonstrations that illustrate different types of energy and energy transformation, and application-based investigations on how we use and can conserve energy.

Students take on the role of chemical engineers to find a safe way to remove surface scalants like calcium carbonate that is both effective and safe. With teacher guidance, students learn about the chemistry involved as they work to remove scaling in a pipe using natural substances. Along with exploring designs based in chemistry, they consider the safety and environmental impacts of their solutions.

What can engineering bacteria in a lab tell us about how to culture or combat them? In this activity, students learn the phenomena that allows us to engineer bacteria on petri dishes with agar as well as how to use a laboratory incubator to speed up bacteria growth. Through this introductory activity, students will learn about the conditions under which bacteria grow, as well as antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and why engineers are turning to nanotechnology to help us understand the bacteria that can help us, or harm us!

In this maker challenge, students design a bacteriophage (a type of virus) that can infect and kill harmful bacteria. The goal is to design a bacteriophage that will effectively attach to as many different types of bacteria as possible. Students can use a variety of building materials: Styrofoam blocks, Styrofoam spheres, Velcro, tape, string, toothpicks, and even 3D printing pens and have a limited amount of time to design and build their bacteriophage.

After building their bacteriophage, students test its ability to infect a variety of “bacteria” such as fuzzy pom-poms, Velcro squares, and paper squares. The phages that are the most successful at killing off the bacteria will be the ones chosen to use in a water treatment solution!

This process represents the genetic engineering form of developing these viruses. Time permitting, the teacher can then show students how some scientists are using the principles of natural selection to engineer viruses that infect multiple bacterial hosts. By sequentially changing the environment by switching out the type of bacteria over the course of a few generations, scientists are left with viruses that can infect all of the different bacterial hosts.