Lesson: Harnessing Wind
Posted on May 20th, 2009 by ASEE
This 50-minute lesson for grades 3-5 introduces the ways that engineers study and harness the wind. Students will learn about the different kinds of winds and how to measure wind direction; how air pressure creates winds, and how engineers build and test wind turbines to harness energy from wind. A separate activity, Bubble-ology, introduces students to aerodynamics by challenging them to devise the best ways to keep a bubble aloft.
Filed under: Grades 6-8, Grades K-5, Lesson Plans | Comments Off on Lesson: Harnessing Wind
Tags: Aerodynamics, Wind Technology
In this two-hour lesson, middle-school students use the engineering design process to design a plant growth chamber for use on the lunar surface. They will work individually and in teams.
In this design challenge for grades 6 to 8, students will harness the power of the sun to design, construct and evaluate a solar-powered modelcar of their creation. Students will utilize the design process and undergo review by their peers to select an optimal gear ratio and components for their car. As a culminating activity, students compete in a “Solar Sprint” race modeled after the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s Junior Solar Sprint competition.
In this lesson for ages 8 to 18, students work in teams to design and build a working robotic arm from a set of everyday items. Each arm should be able to pick up a Styrofoam cup.
This lesson for students in grades 5 through 12 explores how computerized barcoding has simplified distributing and pricing of products. Students learn about encoding and decoding, the barcoding system, and how a mathematical formula is embedded in barcoding to safeguard against errors. They use websites to identify product barcodes, test codes from everyday products, and work as an engineering team to come up with the next generation of information embedding systems.
InvenTeams is a Lemelson-MIT national initiative to foster inventiveness among high school students. Teams composed of students, teacher(s) and mentors identify a problem to address with an invention, and receive up to $10,000 ($2,000 can be a teacher stipend) to develop a prototype.
In this activity for grades 6 to 12, students use simple materials to design, build, and test a model of a free-standing structure used to support overhead road signs. First, students watch a video on the engineering design process. Then the design challenge is defined. Next, students conduct research by looking at and discussing images of sign support structures, observing overhead signs in their own environment, and watching a video about bridge design for comparison.
In this lesson for grades 6 through 12, the goal is for students to figure out how to collect steam from boiling “polluted” water and then let it condense to create pure, clean water.
These two lesson plans for grades 3-8 give elementary school students an early exposure to construction and the composition of building materials. By learning about construction materials used in their school buildings, students see, for instance, how rocks are modified into construction materials. They can also observe how these materials can deteriorate over time.
