This lesson focuses on how food packages are designed and made. Students will learn three of the main functions of a food package. They will learn what is necessary of the design and materials of a package to keep food clean, protect or aid in the physical and chemical changes that can take place in a food, and identify a food appealingly. Then, in the associated activity, the students will have the opportunity to become packaging engineers by designing and building their own food package for a particular type of food.

The football team's bench fell apart at the game. We need to design and build a prototype for a new bench using the properties of congruent triangles and/or parallel lines.

Students review information learned during the past five lessons and activities of the Introduction to Engineering unit. Working in teams, they create flyers and short quizzes about various types of engineering to share with the class and collect into a "Olympic Engineering Binder" for the class to keep.

Air is one of Earth's most precious resources, and we need to take care of it in order to preserve the environment and protect human health. To this end, students develop their understanding of visible air pollutants with an incomplete combustion demonstration, a "smog in a jar" demonstration, and by building simple particulate matter collectors.

This project is a makerspace focused STEM project. Students build a device that will stop a car that is attempting to break through a toll booth, border crossing, or other gate. Students build a model of their device and use an RC car to test it out.

This project is a makerspace focused STEM project. Students build a device that will stop a car that is attempting to break through a toll booth, border crossing, or other gate. Students build a model of their device and use an RC car to test it out.

Students will be designing and performing an experiment using the scientific method to answer the following question: How can I make a toy car move? Using simple materials, students will explore how a force is a push or a pull.

Students learn how forces affect the human skeletal system through fractures and why certain bones are more likely to break than others depending on their design and use in the body. They learn how engineers and doctors collaborate to design effective treatments with consideration for the location, fracture severity and patient age, as well as the use of biocompatible materials. Learning the lesson content prepares students for the associated activity in which they test small animal bones to failure and then design treatment repair plans.

In the first of two lessons of this curricular unit, students are introduced to the concept of friction as a force that impedes motion when two surfaces are in contact. Student teams use spring scales to drag objects, such as a ceramic coffee cup, along a table top or the floor, measuring the frictional force that exists between the moving object and the surface it slides on. By modifying the bottom surface of the object, students find out what kinds of surfaces generate more or less friction. They also discover that both static and kinetic friction are involved when an object initially at rest is caused to slide across a surface. In the second lesson of the unit, students design and conduct experiments to determine the effects of weight and surface area on friction. They discover that weight affects normal friction (the friction that results from surface roughness), but for very smooth surfaces, the friction due to molecular attraction is affected by contact area.

Students use a simple set up consisting of a current carrying wire and a magnet to explore the forces which enable biomedical imaging. In doing so, students run a current through a wire and then hold magnets in various positions to establish and explore the magnetic force acting on the wire. They move the magnets and change the current in the wire to explore how the force changes.

Through a series of three lessons, each with its own hands-on activity, students are introduced to 1) forces, loads and stress, 2) tensile loads and failure, and 3) torsion on structures—fundamental physics concepts that are critical to understanding the built world. The associated activities engage students through experimenting with hot glue gun sticks to experience tension, compression and torsion; the design of plastic chair webbing strips; and problem-solving to reinforce foam insulation "antenna towers" to withstand specified bending and twisting.

Use this activity to explore forces acting on objects, practice graphing experimental data, and introduce the algebra concepts of slope and intercept of a line. A wooden 2 x 4 beam is set on top of two scales. Students learn how to conduct an experiment by applying loads at different locations along the beam, recording the exact position of the applied load and the reaction forces measured by the scales at each end of the beam. In addition, students analyze the experiment data with the use of a chart and a table, and model/graph linear equations to describe relationships between independent and dependent variables.

Students conduct several simple lab activities to learn about the five fundamental load types that can act on structures: tension, compression, shear, bending and torsion. In this activity, students play the role of molecules in a beam that is subject to various loading schemes.

In this engaging forensic scavenger hunt lesson, students step into the roles of junior detectives tasked with solving the mystery of a cookie jar missing from a teacher’s room.  Equipped with essential forensic skills, including fingerprint analysis and conducting experiments like chromatography, students collaborate in teams to gather evidence from various stations strategically placed around the school. As they decipher clues and examine crime scenes, students hone their critical thinking abilities and scientific reasoning, ultimately piecing together the puzzle. This hands-on experience not only reinforces STEM principles but also fosters teamwork and problem-solving skills in an exciting and interactive learning environment. 

This lesson on fingerprinting takes a unique approach to a standard topic in Forensic Science. While students will learn the basics of fingerprinting, how to lift a print and learn unique characteristics of fingerprints, they will become aware of the flaws of fingerprinting. By investigating the case of the Madrid Spain Bombing students will discover a match is not always accurate.

Students learn about four forms of equations: direct variation, slope-intercept form, standard form and point-slope form. They graph and complete problem sets for each, converting from one form of equation to another, and learning the benefits and uses of each.

Students take a closer look at cars and learn about some characteristics that affect their energy efficiency, including rolling resistance and the aerodynamics of shape and size. They come to see how vehicles are one example of a product in which engineers are making changes and improvements to gain greater efficiency and thus require less energy to operate.

Students model and design the sound environment for a room. They analyze the sound performance of different materials that represent wallpaper, thick curtains, and sound-absorbing panels. Then, referring to the results of their analysis, they design another room based on certain specifications, and test their designs.

In this lesson, students will learn that minerals are a necessary part of our diet. They will learn that different minerals have different functions in the body. More specifically, they will discover that iron is necessary to carry oxygen around the body. In the associated activity, students will design a process that removes the most iron from the cereal.

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:

"Many factors influence recovery from surgical ACL reconstruction, and defining these is key to achieving the best outcomes. While the elements linked to surgical success in adult populations are well defined, they aren’t so clear for younger patients. New research from the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York suggests that for these patients, age matters when it comes to protecting the knee. That conclusion stems from an evaluation of 324 athletes under 20 years of age who underwent ACL reconstruction following a sports injury. A key consideration when operating on this group is minimizing the risk of growth disturbances. Children and young adolescents haven’t reached skeletal maturity, which has led to the development of age-specific surgical techniques. Researchers compared several of these approaches among groups divided based on skeletal age, school age distribution, surgical technique, and graft selection. Clinical follow-up was performed for at least 2 years..."

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