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
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.
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.
