Posted on May 3rd, 2019 by Mary Lord
Students in grades 4 to 8 or higher learn the basics of electricity and sound by designing and building a working telegraph system using batteries, wire, and other simple parts. They then use their telegraphs – one of history’s most important inventions – to send and receive messages.
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Filed under: Class Activities, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Lesson Plans | Comments Off on Build a Telegraph Tapper
Tags: Class Activities, electricity, Energy, Golden spike transcontinental railroad, History, Lesson Plan, Morse code, sound, telecommunications, telegraph, train
Posted on December 16th, 2018 by Mary Lord
Students in grades 6 to 12 learn simple circuitry by creating light-up paper cards using only copper tape, a coin cell battery, a light-emitting diode (LED), and small electronic components. An artistic way to teach the basics of how circuits function—no soldering required!
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Filed under: Class Activities, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Lesson Plans | Comments Off on Paper Circuits Greeting Cards
Tags: Class Activities, electricity, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, LEDs, Lesson Plan, NGSS, paper circuits greeting cards, Physics, STEAM, Technology
Posted on December 18th, 2015 by Mary Lord
In this activity, upper elementary students working alone or in pairs learn about electrical circuits and the design process by dismantling a “singing” greeting card and using the parts to build an alarm system.
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Filed under: Class Activities, Grades 6-8, Grades K-5 | Comments Off on Hack a Greeting Card
Tags: circuits, Class Activities, Design, electricity, electronics, Grades 6-8, Grades K-5, greeting card, hack-a-thon, maker
Posted on July 10th, 2015 by Mary Lord
High school students working in teams of four learn how a device made with dye from berries can be used to convert light energy into electrical energy by building their own organic solar cells and measuring performance based on power output.
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Filed under: Class Activities, Grades 9-12, Grades 9-12, Lesson Plans | Comments Off on Berry Organic Solar Energy
Tags: Alternative Energy, berry, Chemical Engineering, Class Activities, curcuits, electrical circuits, Electrical Engineering, electricity, Grades 9-12, materials, organic, Solar Energy, Sustainability
Posted on December 11th, 2014 by Mary Lord
Light-emitting diodes illuminate everything from traffic signals to shimmering sculptures like this one by Makoto Tojiki. But the researchers whose early 1990s breakthrough – a blue-light LED – made today’s energy-saving white lamps possible toiled mostly in the shadows… until they won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2014.
No longer. In September, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awarded the Nobel Prize in physics to Isamu Akasaki of Meijo University in Nagoya, Japan, Hiroshi Amano of Nagoya University, and Shuji Nakamura, a professor of materials and co-director of the Solid State Lighting and Energy Electronics Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
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Filed under: Special Features | Comments Off on Blue LED Beams Nobel Fame
Tags: blue LED, discovery, Electrical, electricity, Hiroshi Amano, Innovation, invention, Isamu Akasaki, light, Nobel Prize, Physics, Shuji Nakamura
Posted on December 11th, 2014 by Mary Lord
In this fun activity developed by St. Thomas University engineering associate professor AnnMarie Thomas, students of all ages learn the basic principles of electricity by fashioning circuits from play dough, batteries, and LEDs. No soldering necessary!
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Filed under: Class Activities, Grades 6-8, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Grades K-5, Grades K-5, Lesson Plans, Web Resources | 1 Comment »
Tags: afterschool activities, circuits, Class Activities, Electrical Engineering, electricity, Energy, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Grades K-5, LEDs, lights, Squishy Circuits, St. Thomas University, STEM education
Posted on August 28th, 2014 by Mary Lord
Are your students vexed by vectors or mystified by electricity? MIT’s Open Courseware offers a series of videos designed to help students learn these and other pivotal concepts in science, technology, engineering, mathematics that are the building blocks of many engineering curricula.
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Filed under: For Teachers, Grades 9-12, K-12 Outreach Programs, Special Features, Web Resources | Comments Off on MIT Videos Convey Key STEM Concepts
Tags: Biology, calculus, Chemistry, electricity, Engineering, integral, Mathematics, MIT, motions and forces, Open Courseware, Physics, probability, Problem Solving, STEM videos, vectors
