In this activity, the students will apply the concepts they learned regarding mass, volume and density in the previous activities to design a boat.
Students conduct an experiment to determine whether or not the sense of smell is important to being able to recognize foods by taste. They do this by attempting to identify several different foods that have similar textures. For some of the attempts, students hold their noses and close their eyes, while for others they only close their eyes. After they have conducted the experiment, they create bar graphs showing the number of correct and incorrect identifications for the two different experimental conditions tested.
The goal of this activity is for students to develop visual literacy. They learn how images are manipulated for a powerful effect and how a photograph can make the invisible (pollutants that form acid rain) visible (through the damage they cause). The specific objective is to write captions for photographs.
Students are introduced to the health risks caused by cooking and heating with inefficient cook stoves inside homes, a common practice in rural developing communities. Students simulate the cook stove scenario and use the engineering design process, including iterative trials, to increase warmth inside a building while reducing air quality problems. Students then collect and graph data, and analyze their findings.
Students see how different levels of surface tension affect water's ability to move. Teams "race" water droplets down tracks made of different materials, making measurements, collecting data, making calculations, graphing results and comparing to their predictions and the properties of each surface, determining which surface exhibits the highest (or lowest) level of surface tension with water. They apply their results to make engineering recommendations for real-world applications.
Students learn about wind as a source of renewable energy and explore the advantages and disadvantages wind turbines and wind farms. They also learn about the effectiveness of wind turbines in varying weather conditions and how engineers work to create wind power that is cheaper, more reliable and safer for wildlife.
With the challenge to program computers to mimic the human reaction after touching a hot object, students program LEGO® robots to "react" and move back quickly once their touch sensors bump into something. By relating human senses to electronic sensors used in robots, students see the similarities between the human brain and its engineering counterpart, the computer, and come to better understand the functioning of sensors in both applications. They apply an understanding of the human "stimulus-sensor-coordinator-effector-response" framework to logically understand human and robot actions.
In this activity, students will review and evaluate the ways land is covered and used in their local community. They will also consider the environmental effects of the different types of land use. Students will act as community planning engineers to determine where to place a new structure that will have the least effect on the environment.
In this activity, students work as engineers to build and observe a model landfill. They will understand the process and pitfalls of the use of landfills as a method for the waste disposal.
Closing one eye eliminates one of the clues that your brain uses to judge depth. Trying to perform a simple task with one eye closed demonstrates how much you rely on your depth perception. In this activity, learners compare their ability to perform simple tasks with one eye versus with two eyes.
Los estudiantes aprenden acerca de la biomímisis y el proceso de diseño técnico al diseñar y construir un modelo del pie de la perdiz.
Students are introduced to the engineering design process, focusing on the concept of brainstorming design alternatives. They learn that engineering is about designing creative ways to improve existing artifacts, technologies or processes, or developing new inventions that benefit society. Students come to realize that they can be engineers and use the design process themselves to create tomorrow's innovations.
Students strengthen their communicate skills about measurements by learning the meaning of base units and derived units, including speed one of the most common derived units (distance/time). Working in groups, students measure the time for LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT robots to move a certain distance. The robots are started and stopped via touch sensors and programmed to display the distance traveled. Using their collected data, students complete a worksheet to calculate the robots' (mean/average) speeds at given motor powers.
This is the last of five sound lessons, and it introduces acoustics as the science of studying and controlling sound. Students learn how different materials reflect and absorb sound.
In this activity, students learn how engineers design faucets. Students will learn about water pressure by building a simple system to model faucets and test the relationship between pressure, area and force. This is a great outdoor activity on a warm day.
Students learn about tornadoes - their basic characteristics, damage and occurrence. Students are introduced to the ways that engineers consider strong winds, specifically tornadoes, in their design of structures. Also, students learn how tornadoes are rated, and learn some basics of tornado safety.
Students learn about tornadoes, the damage they cause, and how to rate tornadoes. Specifically, students investigate the Enhanced Fujita Damage Scale of tornado intensity, and use it to complete a mock engineering analysis of damage caused by a tornado. Additional consideration is given to tornado warning systems and how these systems can be improved to be safer. Lastly, students learn basic tornado safety procedures.
Students will analyze data of tornadoes throughout the United States. They will create a bar graph of the number of tornadoes for the top ten states in the country and then calculate the median and the mode of the data.
Students work in pairs or small groups to identify and categorize various objects. One student is blindfolded and the other student chooses five objects for their partner to identify. The blindfolded student has to describe and try to identify the object based solely on touch. Both students then record their data, describing the objects first as human-made or natural, then living or non-living, and finally physical characteristics.
In this activity, a lightbulb is placed in front of a concave mirror. The actual lightbulb is not visible to the viewer, but the viewer can see the mirror image of the lightbulb formed in space. When the viewer tries to touch the lightbulb, they are attempting to touch an image. Their hand moves right through what seems to be a solid object! Learners will enjoy this illusion, while investigating principles of light and mirrors. In this version of a popular Exploratorium exhibit, a lightbulb is substituted for a spring.