Posted on November 8th, 2010 by ASEE
Students in grades 6-12 are challenged to build a drinking straw tower that can withstand simulated earthquake vibrations and increasing weight and pressure. Doing so, they learn basic principles of design and earthquake engineering while practicing team skills.
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Filed under: Class Activities, Grades 6-8, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Grades 9-12, Lesson Plans | 8 Comments »
Tags: Building Design, Civil Engineering, Class Activities, Engineering Design Process, Lesson Plans, Safety engineering
Posted on November 1st, 2010 by ASEE
This fun — but gooey — experiment with cornstarch has students in grades 3-8 creating, then testing, a batch of cornstarch ooze. They learn about the unusual properties of this and other non-Newtonian fluids.
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Filed under: Class Activities, Grades 6-8, Grades K-5 | 1 Comment »
Tags: Chemistry, Class Activities, Grades 3-8, Polymers, Slime
Posted on September 20th, 2010 by ASEE
Students in grades 5-12 try to build the tallest structure they can using only two sheets of newspaper. As they do so, they learn about building design.
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Filed under: Class Activities, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Grades K-5 | 1 Comment »
Tags: Architecture, Building Design, Class Activities, Grades 5-12
Posted on September 13th, 2010 by Jaimie Schock
What kinds of foods are easiest to ferment for fuel? Ethanol is made from a variety of plant substances – corn, sugar cane, even some kinds of wood. In this activity, students test different substances to see what they can learn about fermentation.
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Filed under: Class Activities, Grades 9-12 | Comments Off on Activity: Ethanol Fermentation
Tags: Agricultural, Alternative Energy, Alternative Fuels, Class Activities, Environmental Engineering, Grades 9-12, Green Technology
Posted on September 6th, 2010 by ASEE
In this Techbridge lesson, students in grades 5-12 collaborate to solve a fun engineering challenge: to create a device capable of transferring a set of “radioactive” golf balls from one bag to another – with no human contact. Which team can complete the task in the shortest amount of time possible?
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Filed under: Class Activities, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12 | 7 Comments »
Tags: Collaborative Activity, Mechanical engineering, Team-building skills
Posted on July 19th, 2010 by ASEE
Students in grades 5-8 learn the basic principle of buoyancy and how submarines use it to dive and ascend in water through creating their own submarine out of a soda bottle, pennies, and other household items. Activity courtesy of the National Museum of the U.S. Navy.
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Filed under: Class Activities, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Grades K-5, K-12 Outreach Programs, Lesson Plans | 3 Comments »
Tags: buoyancy, Class Activities, Engineering Design Process, Nautical Engineering, Ocean, Ocean science, submarine, U.S. Navy
Posted on July 5th, 2010 by ASEE
Would you believe that slime is a member of the Space Shuttle team? As an advanced viscoelastic material, slime is an amazingly lead-proof hydraulic fluid used in all critical positioning systems in space. Check out these slime recipes from the Inamori School of Engineering, Alfred University.
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Filed under: Class Activities, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Grades K-5 | Comments Off on Activity: Making Slime
Tags: Chemistry, Class Activities, Physical Science, Physics
Posted on July 5th, 2010 by ASEE
In this activity for grades 6-8, students learn about the dynamics of hot air balloons. Working in groups, they construct a working model, then use a hair dryer as the heat source to demonstrate the principle that hot air rises. Activity courtesy of the Federal Aviation Administration.
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Filed under: Class Activities, Grades 6-8 | Comments Off on Activity: Float a Hot Air Balloon
Tags: Class Activities, Physical Science, Physics
Posted on July 5th, 2010 by ASEE
For this activity, which can be done with a partner school, student teams design a package for a single Pringles potato chip that allow it to be sent through the mail and arrive intact.
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Filed under: Class Activities, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Grades K-5 | 3 Comments »
Tags: Class Activities, Corporations, Packaging Engineering