Solar Sails: The Future of Space Travel
Teams of students in grades 7 to 9 follow the engineering design process to create, construct, test, and improve model solar sails made of aluminum foil to move cardboard tube satellites through “space” on a string. During the process, they learn about Newton’s laws of motion and the transfer of energy from wave energy to mechanical energy.
Filed under: Class Activities, Grades 6-8, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Grades 9-12, Lesson Plans | Comments Off on Solar Sails: The Future of Space Travel
Tags: Aerospace, Class Activities, Design, energy transfer, Engineering Design Process, forces and motion, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Lesson Plan, Newton, Newton's Laws, NGSS aligned activity, solar sails, space exploration, spacecraft, teachengineering
Tufts University students took to the beach for a fun, hands-on lesson in engineering design, creativity, and materials science.
Students in grades 3 to 5 learn about basic principles of engineering through a series of 12 hands-on activities and lessons related to the Olympics and sports, including designing venues and protective gear.
Celebrate National Robotics Week April 3-11 with robot videos, family code night, or other fun virtual activity designed to inspire the next generation of engineers and roboticists. 
Like NASA engineering teams, students learn about and then follow the steps of the engineering design process to design and build original model devices to help astronauts eat in a microgravity environment—their own creative devices for food storage and meal preparation. 
High school students explore the many ways that engineers provide natural lighting to interior spaces by analyzing various methods of daylighting and then constructing model houses from foam core board based on their observations and calculations of the optimal use of available “sunlight.”
In this open-ended design activity, students in grades 3 to 5 use everyday materials such as water bottles and straws to build small-scale transportation devices that incorporate two simple machines: a wheel and axle, and a lever. They race their vehicles, measuring distance, time and weight; and then calculate speed. 
A classic engineering challenge involves designing and building devices that can deliver necessary goods to “Toxic Island,” an island that has been quarantined by the World Health Organization due to a nasty outbreak of disease. Working within specific constraints, including limited materials, middle school students follow the engineering design process to design, test, and improve a device that can deliver “medicine” and other vital supplies accurately and quickly without touching either the water or island.
Students in grades 6 to 8 follow the engineering design process while combining mechanical engineering and bioengineering to create a new wristwatch face for a visually impaired student at their school. Teams present their designs to the class and construct prototypes of a watch face that doesn’t rely on sight to tell time.
