Recently Added Curriculum

This activity introduces students to the real-world challenges robotic systems face in modern warehouses, where machines must sort thousands of items accurately, safely, and efficiently. Students explore core concepts such as joint motion, coordinate systems, sensing, and basic programming logic to understand how robots move and make decisions. Thinking like robotic engineers, students then work in teams to program the SO-101 robotic arm to complete a pick-and-place challenge, moving objects from a pickup area to specific sorting bins based on color or size.

Students explore myelination, demyelination, and remyelination through a hands-on simulation. They design a model of a myelinated nerve by lining a tube with a material that helps a marble travel through quickly and smoothly. After measuring the marble’s speed through this “healthy” tube, students then simulate demyelination by damaging or removing part of the lining and measuring the slower speed. Finally, they attempt to “repair” the tube, test the marble’s speed again, and compare results.

Students explore the science and engineering behind hydraulic bridges. They begin by considering how bridges lift to allow large ships to pass and learn that hydraulic systems use pressurized fluids to generate controlled, powerful motion. Through hands-on exploration with syringes filled with air, water, and viscous substances, students observe how different fluids transfer force and how viscosity affects movement. These investigations reinforce key physics concepts, including balanced and unbalanced forces, fluid behavior, and Newton’s First Law of Inertia. Students then apply this knowledge by designing and constructing a model hydraulic bridge using syringes, tubing, and craft materials. During the design process, they evaluate stability, force transfer, and structural support while troubleshooting and refining their ideas.

This activity integrates life science, engineering, and materials science as students design a biome-specific robot. Students start by researching an assigned global biome, exploring its unique characteristics such as climate, terrain, and biodiversity. This research helps them understand the environmental challenges their robots will face. Next, they delve into the world of high-performance polymers, learning about their properties, uses, and applications. Using this knowledge and applying engineering design principles, students strategically select polymers to build a robot that can function effectively within their chosen biome's unique conditions.

Students act as biomedical engineers and follow the engineering design process to create and test custom orthotic insoles. They begin by asking questions to learn about foot-related medical problems, such as plantar fasciitis and flat feet, and identify how orthotics can help reduce pain or pressure. Next, they imagine possible insole designs that could support the foot and reduce impact during movement. During the plan stage, students sketch their ideas and select materials with varying foam densities to provide targeted support for their chosen foot condition. They then create a prototype orthotic using foam and hot glue based on their plan. To test their designs, students drop a weighted ball onto kinetic sand with and without their orthotics, measuring the depth of impact to determine how much pressure their design absorbs. Afterward, they improve their designs by analyzing test data, identifying areas of success, and considering modifications.

This activity provides a foundation for ethical hacking by using tools in Kali Linux to analyze and attack a target system, Metasploitable2. Students learn about ethical hacking, containers, and network engineering as they use Docker to build and connect their own hacker and target systems. They identify and install necessary tools on Kali Linux, including Nmap to scan the target for open ports and running processes. This information helps them create efficient username and password lists, or "dictionaries," using Crunch. The activity culminates with students using Hydra to brute-force crack the target system's passwords with their custom wordlists.

Students become “efficiency experts” who have been contracted by an auto manufacturer. They are presented with plans for three car models (made from plastic building bricks) the company currently makes. The current designs are selling well but are not as profitable as the company would like, because they require more building materials (plastic bricks) and take more time to build than would be ideal. After conducting a simulation of the company’s current mass production system, the “efficiency experts” are asked to propose modifications to the current system (e.g., vehicle design, assembly line layout, and labor allocation) that will allow the company to make more cars for a lower price, while remaining within specific safety and efficiency guidelines required by law. The “efficiency experts” then implement their redesigned system and compare building time and cost of the revised system to the original one. Finally, the experts prepare a presentation for the auto manufacturer’s executives during which they report their proposed modifications, citing specific examples of cost and time that was saved between the original production process and the revised one.

Students design, build, and test a model robotic arm capable of moving objects from one location to another. Using everyday materials such as craft sticks, string, paper clips, and rubber bands, students explore how simple machines work together to perform complex tasks, like NASA engineers who design robotic arms for Mars rovers and the International Space Station.

Students explore the mechanical principles behind hand movement by constructing a working model of a human finger and hand.

Students act as chemical engineers tasked with improving the stability of protein-based medicines by developing a cost-effective surfactant to reduce protein aggregation during shipment. They learn about surface tension, surfactants, and the contributions of the scientist Agnes Pockels before using a simple Langmuir-Pockels trough model to test unknown additives. Using their collected data, students propose and evaluate a surfactant solution to minimize protein aggregation caused by agitation.

Students use readily available materials to design and build a device that transports a large amount of material down a hill. They must work within limited resources to construct their design. As they learn about motion and forces, students apply concepts of kinematics and dynamics to evaluate the performance of their system to determine the maximum weight it can safely carry down the hill in the least amount of time without breaking the rope. Finally, students perform a force analysis to calculate the acceleration of their load.

Students are challenged to efficiently extract a model rare earth element, terbium, which is essential for electronics but typically refined using harmful acid-washing methods. Students first learn about water and solution properties such as hydrophobic/hydrophilic interactions, solubility, and the effects of temperature and agitation. They then apply this knowledge to a simulated extraction challenge: separating black pepper (terbium) from a solution of water (acid), salt (calcium), and sugar (iron). Finally, competing student groups must determine the fastest, most cost-effective combination of variables (temperature, agitation, etc.) to dissolve the salt and sugar, leaving only the "purified" pepper, thereby modeling the innovative and fiscally responsible problem-solving used by environmental engineers to safely extract rare earth elements.

Students explore the fundamentals of digital logic by building truth tables and designing their own logic circuits. Using a series of scaffolded worksheets, students gain hands-on experience with core logic gates such as AND, OR, NOT, NAND, NOR, XOR, and XNOR. They apply this knowledge by analyzing multi-input circuits and eventually designing their own four-input logic system. On the final day, students use the free online circuit simulator Wokwi to test and verify their custom logic gate designs. Through this activity, students gain foundational experience in binary reasoning, digital electronics, and circuit logic that underpins real-world computing systems.

Students become red team ethical hackers by building a safe hacking lab and learning tools used to test real networks. Students are introduced to ethical hacking, containers, network engineering, wordlist generation, and brute-force password cracking. Using Podman, students create and network their hacker system (Kali Linux) and target system (Metasploitable2 or “Meta2”). With Netcat, they scan the target’s IPs, ports, and services, then design efficient username and password lists with Maskprocessor. Finally, students test vulnerabilities by attempting controlled brute-force attacks on the target and its DVWA web server using Medusa and their custom wordlists. The activity builds practical lab skills and broadens understanding of computer science topics such as cryptography, web apps, networking, containers, and AI/LLMs.

Teams of students become startup car companies aiming to win a contract with Porsche. The project requires them to design and build four prototype vehicles using plastic bricks. They then take on various engineering roles to plan a production floor layout and run a simulated production process. After analyzing their initial performance and making improvements, a second simulation determines which team wins the contract based on the number of high-quality vehicles they produce. The project concludes with each team creating a report using data from both simulations to evaluate their performance and suggest future improvements.