Students make a skydiver and parachute contraption to demonstrate how drag caused by air resistance slows the descent of skydivers as they travel back to Earth. Gravity pulls the skydiver toward the Earth, while the air trapped by the parachute provides an upward resisting force (drag) on the skydiver.

Students are introduced to the circulatory system, the heart, and blood flow in the human body. Through guided pre-reading, during-reading and post-reading activities, students learn about the circulatory system's parts, functions and disorders, as well as engineering medical solutions. By cultivating literacy practices as presented in this lesson, students can improve their scientific and technological literacy.

Students learn about various crystals, such as kidney stones, within the human body. They also learn about how crystals grow and ways to inhibit their growth. They also learn how researchers such as chemical engineers design drugs with the intent to inhibit crystal growth for medical treatment purposes and the factors they face when attempting to implement their designs. A day before presenting this lesson to students, conduct the associated activity, Rock Candy Your Body.

Students design and build devices to protect and accurately deliver dropped eggs. The devices and their contents represent care packages that must be safely delivered to people in a disaster area with no road access. Similar to engineering design teams, students design their devices using a number of requirements and constraints such as limited supplies and time. The activity emphasizes the change from potential energy to kinetic energy of the devices and their contents and the energy transfer that occurs on impact. Students enjoy this competitive challenge as they attain a deeper understanding of mechanical energy concepts.

Students use a tension-compression machine (or an alternative bone-breaking setup) to see how different bones fracture differently and with different amounts of force, depending on their body locations. Teams determine bone mass and volume, calculate bone density, and predict fracture force. Then they each test a small animal bone (chicken, turkey, cat) to failure, examining the break to analyze the fracture type. Groups conduct research about biomedical challenges, materials and repair methods, and design repair treatment plans specific to their bones and fracture types, presenting their design recommendations to the class.

In their reading from activity 1 of this unit, students should have discovered the term "logarithm." It is at this point that they begin their study of logarithms. Specifically, students examine the definition, history and relationship to exponents; they rewrite exponents as logarithms and vice versa, evaluating expressions, solving for a missing piece. Students then study the properties of logarithms (multiplication/addition, division/subtraction, exponents). They complete a set of practice problems to apply the skills they have learned (rewriting logarithms and exponents, evaluating expressions, solving/examining equations for a missing variable.) Then they complete a short quiz covering what they have studied thus far concerning logarithms (problems similar to the practice problems). They consider how what they have learned moves them closer to answering the unit's challenge question.

Students learn about the role engineers and engineering play in repairing severe bone fractures. They acquire knowledge about the design and development of implant rods, pins, plates, screws and bone grafts. They learn about materials science, biocompatibility and minimally-invasive surgery.

Students revisit the mathematics required to find bone mineral density, to which they were introduced in lesson 2 of this unit. They learn the equation to find intensity, Beer's law, and how to use it. Then they complete a sheet of practice problems that use the equation.

Students examine an image produced by a cabinet x-ray system to determine if it is a quality bone mineral density image. They write in their journals about what they need to know to be able to make this judgment. Students learn about what bone mineral density is, how a BMD image can be obtained, and how it is related to the x-ray field. Students examine the process used to obtain a BMD image and how this process is related to mathematics, primarily through logarithmic functions. They study the relationship between logarithms and exponents, the properties of logarithms, common and natural logarithms, solving exponential equations and Beer's law.

This resource is a video abstract of a research paper created by Research Square on behalf of its authors. It provides a synopsis that's easy to understand, and can be used to introduce the topics it covers to students, researchers, and the general public. The video's transcript is also provided in full, with a portion provided below for preview:

"Patellar tendinopathy, or jumper’s knee, is a common injury in athletes of all skill levels. Aside from causing pain and dysfunction, the condition can be costly for individuals and sports teams. Physical therapy is critical, but consistently effective treatment regimens remain elusive. Regenerative therapy is one promising alternative, as platelet-rich plasma injection and cultured stem cell injection have been shown to repair other types of damaged tissue. To explore the benefits for jumper’s knee, researchers compared these two treatments in patients with patellar tendinopathy. The findings, reported in _The American Journal of Sports Medicine_, suggest that cultured stem cell injection is a particularly promising option for functional and structural healing. The researchers examined 20 male patients with patellar tendinopathy that had lasted for at least 4 months, was unresponsive to nonsurgical treatments, and featured lesions larger than 3 mm..."

The rest of the transcript, along with a link to the research itself, is available on the resource itself.

After learning, comparing and contrasting the steps of the engineering design process (EDP) and scientific method, students review the human skeletal system, including the major bones, bone types, bone functions and bone tissues, as well as other details about bone composition. Students then pair-read an article about bones and bone growth and compile their notes to summarize the article. Finally, students complete a homework assignment to review the major bones in the human body, preparing them for the associated activities in which they create and test prototype replacement bones with appropriate densities. Two PowerPoint(TM) presentations, pre-/post-test, handout and worksheet are provided.

Student teams design their own booms (bridges) and engage in a friendly competition with other teams to test their designs. Each team strives to design a boom that is light, can hold a certain amount of weight, and is affordable to build. Teams are also assessed on how close their design estimations are to the final weight and cost of their boom "construction." This activity teaches students how to simplify the math behind the risk and estimation process that takes place at every engineering firm prior to the bidding phase when an engineering firm calculates how much money it will take to build the project and then "bids" against other competitors.

"Botany in Hawai‘i" discusses introductory topics of Botany through examples of the native and introduced plants found in Hawai‘i. It includes anatomy and physiology of seeds, roots, leaves, stems, fruits and flowers and covers the main plant groups from nonvascular to flowering plants. This book provides a visual reference to botanical concepts and terminology for beginners.

This lesson discusses the result of a charge being subject to both electric and magnetic fields at the same time. It covers the Hall effect, velocity selector, and the charge to mass ratio. Given several sample problems, students learn to calculate the Hall Voltage dependent upon the width of the plate, the drift velocity, and the strength of the magnetic field. Then students learn to calculate the velocity selector, represented by the ratio of the magnitude of the fields assuming the strength of each field is known. Finally, students proceed through a series of calculations to arrive at the charge to mass ratio. A homework set is included as an evaluation of student progress.

Students examine how different balls react when colliding with different surfaces, giving plenty of opportunity for them to see the difference between elastic and inelastic collisions, learn how to calculate momentum, and understand the principle of conservation of momentum.

In this activity, students examine how different balls react when colliding with different surfaces. Also, they will have plenty of opportunity to learn how to calculate momentum and understand the principle of conservation of momentum.

Students find the volume and surface area of a rectangular box (e.g., a cereal box), and then figure out how to convert that box into a new, cubical box having the same volume as the original. As they construct the new, cube-shaped box from the original box material, students discover that the cubical box has less surface area than the original, and thus, a cube is a more efficient way to package things. Students then consider why consumer goods generally aren't packaged in cube-shaped boxes, even though they would require less material to produce and ultimately, less waste to discard. To display their findings, each student designs and constructs a mobile that contains a duplicate of his or her original box, the new cube-shaped box of the same volume, the scraps that are left over from the original box, and pertinent calculations of the volumes and surface areas involved. The activities involved provide valuable experience in problem solving with spatial-visual relationships.

To display the results from the previous activity, each student designs and constructs a mobile that contains a duplicate of his or her original box, the new cube-shaped box of the same volume, the scraps that are left over from the original box, and pertinent calculations of the volumes and surface areas involved. They problem solve and apply their understanding of see-saws and lever systems to create balanced mobiles.

Students learn about the similarities between the human brain and its engineering counterpart, the computer. Since students work with computers routinely, this comparison strengthens their understanding of both how the brain works and how it parallels that of a computer. Students are also introduced to the "stimulus-sensor-coordinator-effector-response" framework for understanding human and robot actions.

This lesson pairs with the book "Pancakes, Pancakes!" by Eric Carle. First read this story and then run the breakfast relay outlined in this lesson.

NGSS: K-ESS3-3

CCSS: SL.K.3

Social Sciences: K.10, K.17, 1.12, 3.12, 5.11, 4.18

Time: 30 minutes

Materials: "Pancakes, Pancakes!" by Eric Carle, food cards and bags labeled: earth, farm, store, factory.