Students use wood, wax paper and oil to investigate the importance of lubrication between materials and to understand the concept of friction. Using wax paper and oil placed between pieces of wood, the function of lubricants between materials is illustrated. Students extend their understanding of friction to bones and joints in the skeletal system and become aware of what engineers can do to help reduce friction in the human body as well as in machines.

In this activity, students are introduced to faults. They will learn about different kinds of faults and understand their relationship to earthquakes. The students will build cardboard models of the three different types of faults as they learn about how earthquakes are formed.

All of us have felt sick at some point in our lives. Many times, we find ourselves asking, "What is the quickest way that I can start to feel better?" During this two-lesson unit, students study that question and determine which form of medicine delivery (pill, liquid, injection/shot) offers the fastest relief. This challenge question serves as a real-world context for learning all about flow rates. Students study how long various prescription methods take to introduce chemicals into our blood streams, as well as use flow rate to determine how increasing a person's heart rate can theoretically make medicines work more quickly. Students are introduced to engineering devices that simulate what occurs during the distribution of antibiotic cells in the body.

Working individually or in groups, students explore the concept of stress (compression) through physical experience and math. They discover why it hurts more to poke themselves with mechanical pencil lead than with an eraser. Then they prove why this is so by using the basic equation for stress and applying the concepts to real engineering problems.

Welcome to the School Librarians Advancing STEM Learning project, a 3-year project that brings together teachers and school librarians to curate and create sets of STEM resources. The goal is to support professional learning cohorts to elevate and expand the role of school librarians, and transform their capacities as instructional leaders toward advancements in STEM learning.This project is led by ISKME, in partnership with the New Hampshire Department of Education, Granite State College, and New Hampshire's Institutions of Higher Education (IHE) Network. The project is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. 

This guide is intended for the Fellows of the School Librarians Advancing STEM Learning project. It includes the tasks and timeline for the Fellows work, as well as links to resources and documents tied to the Fellowship role.

Students develop and solidify their understanding of the concept of "perimeter" as they engage in a portion of the civil engineering task of land surveying. Specifically, they measure and calculate the perimeter of a fenced in area of "farmland," and see that this length is equivalent to the minimum required length of a fence to enclose it. Doing this for variously shaped areas confirms that the perimeter is the minimal length of fence required to enclose those shapes. Then students use the technology of a LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT robot to automate this task. After measuring the perimeter (and thus required fence length) of the "farmland," students see the NXT robot travel around this length, just as a surveyor might travel around an area during the course of surveying land or measuring for fence materials. While practicing their problem solving and measurement skills, students learn and reinforce their scientific and geometric vocabulary.

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:

"Ruminants’ ability to break down human-inedible plant fibers stems from the microbes in their rumen. This process is primarily driven by microbes that can ferment plant fibers into volatile fatty acids (VFAs), followed by the rumen epithelial layer absorbing and partially metabolizing these VFAs. Recently, researchers examined how microbes and epithelial cells interact and contribute to VFA metabolism in lactating dairy cows. Metagenomic binning allowed researchers to categorize and examine the metabolic capacity of even uncultivated microbes and identify bacterial genomes with both cellulose/xylan/pectin degradation capabilities and associations with VFA biosynthesis. They then used gene expression data to construct a single-cell map of the rumen epithelial cell subtypes. Searching gene expression profiles for VFA transporters highlighted key epithelial cell subtypes. Leveraging this data highlighted interactions where microbes potentially influenced the gene expression of host epithelial cells..."

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

Using the LEGO® NXT robotics kit, students construct and program robots to illustrate and explore the Fibonacci sequence. Within teams, students are assigned roles: group leader, chassis builder, arm builder, chief programmer, and Fibonacci verifier. By designing a robot that moves based on the Fibonacci sequence of numbers, they can better visualize how quickly the numbers in the sequence grow. To program the robot to move according to these numbers, students break down the sequence into simple algebraic equations so that the computer can understand the Fibonacci sequence.

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:

"p53 is widely considered the most frequently mutated gene in human disease, including in cancer. Normally, p53 acts as a checkpoint for recognizing DNA damage and actually suppresses tumor formation. Alterations to p53 compromise this function and can make way for life-threatening tumor growth. A new study examined how abnormal p53 might create conditions favorable for one of the most aggressive forms of ovarian carcinoma. The authors of the study began by knocking the p53 gene out of ovarian carcinoma cells and monitoring the effects. Next-generation sequencing of the p53-less cells revealed significantly elevated expression of fibronectin, a structural protein linked to various carcinomas. Loss of p53 function also appeared to boost the cancer cells’ ability to migrate and spread. Data on actual patients with ovarian cancer confirmed the pattern observed in the lab..."

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

Students will participate in a discussion of the Moon's habitability. The students will create a plan for the design and creation of a self-sustaining ecosystem within a lunar station. This lesson was created as part of the 2016 NASA STEM Standards of Practice Project, a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

This lesson describes the major components and functions of the immune system and the role of engineers in keeping the body healthy (e.g., vaccinations and antibiotics, among other things). This lesson also discusses how an astronaut's immune system is suppressed during spaceflight due to stress and other environmental factors.

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:

"Stem cells are usually thought of as possible treatments for diseases like spinal cord injuries or type I diabetes, in which cells need to be replaced. But increasing evidence suggests they may be able to help with sepsis -- a life-threatening complication of infection. Sepsis is one of the most deadly and expensive syndromes, killing a quarter of a million people and incurring 20 billion dollars in hospital costs every year in the United States alone. Classically, sepsis has been thought of as a problem of an overactive immune system. As immune cells respond to infection, they unleash a torrent of inflammatory cytokines, or what’s called a cytokine storm, which can lead to organ failure. But recently, doctors have discovered that sepsis is more complicated, and if someone survives this early hyper-inflammatory stage, they are still at risk of succumbing later, when the syndrome switches over to being immune suppressive..."

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

Filtering is the process of removing or separating the unwanted part of a mixture. In signal processing, filtering is specifically used to remove or extract part of a signal, and this can be accomplished using an analog circuit or a digital device (such as a computer). In this lesson, students learn the impact filtering can have on different types of signals, the concepts of frequency and spectrum, and the connections these topics have to real-world signals such as musical signals. Students also learn the roles that these concepts play in designing different types of filters. The lesson content prepares students for the associated activity in which they use an online demo and a variety of filters to identify the message in a distress signal heavily corrupted by noise.

Students learn the basic principles of filtering as well as how to apply digital filters to extract part of an audio signal by using an interactive online demo website. They apply this knowledge in order to isolate a voice recording from a heavily noise-contaminated sound wave. After completing the associated lesson, expect students to be able to attempt (and many successfully finish) this activity with minimal help from the instructor.

In this activity students will learn the basic concept of Global Positioning Systems (GPS) using triangulation and measurement on a small scale in the classroom. Students discover how GPS and navigation integrate mathematic and scientific concepts to create a standard for locating people and objects. This activity helps students understand both the need for and methods of navigation.

Students create their own simple compasses using thread, needle and water in a bowl and learn how it works.