While the creation of a dam provides many benefits, it can have negative impacts on local ecosystems. Students learn about the major environmental impacts of dams and the engineering solutions used to address them.

Through eight lessons, students are introduced to many facets of dams, including their basic components, the common types (all designed to resist strong forces), their primary benefits (electricity generation, water supply, flood control, irrigation, recreation), and their importance (historically, currently and globally). Through an introduction to kinetic and potential energy, students come to understand how dams generate electricity. They learn about the structure, function and purpose of locks, which involves an introduction to Pascal's law, water pressure and gravity. Other lessons introduce students to common environmental impacts of dams and the engineering approaches to address them. They learn about the life cycle of salmon and the many engineered dam structures that aid in their river passage, as they think of their own methods and devices that could help fish migrate past dams. Students learn how dams and reservoirs become part of the Earth's hydrologic cycle, focusing on the role of evaporation. To conclude, students learn that dams do not last forever; they require ongoing maintenance, occasionally fail or succumb to "old age," or are no longer needed, and are sometimes removed. Through associated hands-on activities, students track their personal water usage; use clay and plastic containers to model and test four types of dam structures; use paper cups and water to learn about water pressure and Pascal's Law; explore kinetic energy by creating their own experimental waterwheel from two-liter plastic bottles; collect and count a stream's insects to gauge its health; play an animated PowerPoint game to quiz their understanding of the salmon life cycle and fish ladders; run a weeklong experiment to measure water evaporation and graph their data; and research eight dams to find out and compare their original purposes, current status, reservoir capacity and lifespan. Woven throughout the unit is a continuing hypothetical scenario in which students act as consulting engineers with a Splash Engineering firm, assisting Thirsty County in designing a dam for Birdseye River.

In this first part of a two-part lab activity, students use triple balance beams and graduated cylinders to take measurements and calculate the densities of several common, irregularly shaped objects with the purpose to resolve confusion about mass and density. After this activity, conduct the associated Density Column Lab - Part 2 activity before presenting the associated Density & Miscibility lesson for discussion about concepts that explain what students have observed.

Concluding a two-part lab activity, students use triple balance beams and graduated cylinders to take measurements and calculate densities of several household liquids and compare them to the densities of irregularly shaped objects (as determined in Part 1). Then they create density columns with the three liquids and four solid items to test their calculations and predictions of the different densities. Once their density columns are complete, students determine the effect of adding detergent to the columns. After this activity, present the associated Density & Miscibility lesson for a discussion about why the column layers do not mix.

After students conduct the two associated activities, Density Column Lab - Parts 1 and 2, present this lesson to provide them with an understanding of why the density column's oil, water and syrup layers do not mix and how the concepts of density and miscibility relate to water chemistry and remediation. Topics covered include miscibility, immiscibility, hydrogen bonds, hydrophobic and hydrophilic. Through the density column lab activities, students see liquids and solids of different densities interact without an understanding of why the resulting layers do not mix. This lesson gives students insight on some of the most fundamental chemical properties of water and how it interacts with different molecules.

Watch warm water float on top of cold water in this video segment adapted from ZOOM.

This video segment adapted from ZOOM offers a clever demonstration of buoyancy by showing how to pour a cup of air into a cup filled with water.

The course considers the growing popularity of sustainability and its implications for the practice of engineering, particularly for the built environment. Two particular methodologies are featured: life cycle assessment (LCA) and Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED). The fundamentals of each approach will be presented. Specific topics covered include water and wastewater management, energy use, material selection, and construction.

Students learn the concept behind the engineering design of a polymer brush—a coating consisting of polymers that is “tethered” to a particular surface. Polymer brushes can be used on water filtration membranes as an antifouling coating. After designing a model that represents an antifouling polymer brush coating for a water filtration surface, students take on the challenge to engineer their brush design on the surface of a Styrofoam block (which serves as a model for a surface filter) using various materials.

Why are some countries rich and others poor? This fundamental question has been on the mind of economists since Adam Smith wrote "The Wealth of Nations" in 1776. This is a full course that covers all the major issues and developments in the field of development economics. Unlike typical college courses, we will take you to the frontier of the discipline, covering recent research as well as more established material. This course is non-technical and is accessible to a beginner. If you pass the final exam, you will earn our "Development Economics" certificate on your profile.

In this activity, students investigate different methods (aeration and filtering) for removing pollutants from water. They will design and build their own water filters.

Students gain a basic understanding of the properties of media soil, sand, compost, gravel and how these materials affect the movement of water (infiltration/percolation) into and below the surface of the ground. They learn about permeability, porosity, particle size, surface area, capillary action, storage capacity and field capacity, and how the characteristics of the materials that compose the media layer ultimately affect the recharging of groundwater tables. They test each type of material, determining storage capacity, field capacity and infiltration rates, seeing the effect of media size on infiltration rate and storage. Then teams apply the testing results to the design their own material mixes that best meet the design requirements. To conclude, they talk about how engineers apply what students learned in the activity about the infiltration rates of different soil materials to the design of stormwater management systems.

Students see how surface tension can enable light objects (paper clips, peppercorns) to float on an island of oil in water, and subsequently sink when the surface tension of the oil/water interface is reduced by the addition of a surfactant; such as ordinary dish soap.

This site teaches kids about the importance of safe drinking water through teaching and learning resources such as an activity on how to build your own aquifer, experiments on the water treatment process, and the drinking water art project.

The course provides the technological background of treatment processes applied for production of drinking water. Treatment processes are demonstrated with laboratory experiments.

This course deals with the design of drinking water treatment plants. We discuss theory and design exercises.

In the growing season, farmers and ranchers keep a watchful eye for any sign of drought. Early warning information can increase their range of options for dealing with the lack of water.

Rapid changes at Earth's surface, largely in response to human activity, have led to the realization that fundamental questions remain to be answered regarding the natural functioning of the Critical Zone, the thin veneer at Earth's surface where the atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere and biosphere interact. EARTH 530 will introduce you to the basics necessary for understanding Earth surface processes in the Critical Zone through an integration of various scientific disciplines. Those who successfully complete EARTH 530 will be able to apply their knowledge of fundamental concepts of Earth surface processes to understanding outstanding fundamental questions in Critical Zone science and how their lives are intimately linked to Critical Zone health.

Students learn about the concepts of the tragedy of the commons and sustainability in the Course Introduction. Project 1 builds on these concepts by having students analyze their family’s ecological footprint using data they collect by auditing their use of various resources. Students then propose how they their family live more sustainably. Part of Sprocket's AP environmental science course.

Lurking beneath our natural desire to ensure that water will always be available to perform its many life-supporting functions is the fear that it will run out. Our thinking (in truth, our feeling) about water tends to be dominated by myth and misunderstanding. We believe that our 'need' for water is exponentially greater than other wants and needs; we also believe that this intense 'need' confers special status, making water a unique resource. We mistrust the ability of people to recognize water's special status, and we assert that only through common or public ownership can we preserve water for future generations. Paradoxically, while our conviction that water is unique derives from our knowledge of its many important uses, we have trouble acknowledging the value of water in anything other than pristine form. We tend to assume that, when it comes to water, there's no such thing as 'too clean.' Unfortunately, in acquiescing to these myths, we make things worse; we create for ourselves an intellectual box that constrains our ability to conserve the resource we value so highly. These lessons challenge the myths and use economic reasoning to suggest a new way to think about our use of this vital resource. In brief, the lessons assert: (1) that in economic terms, water is not fundamentally different from any other resource, good, or service; and (2) that many of the answers to our concerns about water conservation and water quality can be found in markets, the same institution that provides us bread, shoes, underwear, tractors, flowers, computers, charities, flu shots, bubblegum, the collectible craze of the moment, and the myriad other products we find 'essential' to the way we wish to live.