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Redesigning a Classroom for the Visually Impaired

Washington state School for the Blind kids readingHigh school students practice human-centered design by imagining, designing, and prototyping a product to improve classroom accessibility for the visually impaired. The begin by wearing low-vision simulation goggles (or blindfolds) and walking with canes to navigate through a classroom in order to experience what it feels like to be visually impaired.

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Wind-Powered Sail Cars

TeachEngineering UCD Sail CarsElementary students learn about wind and kinetic and renewable energy while following the steps of the engineering design process to imagine, create, test, evaluate, and refine small, wind-powered sail cars built from limited quantities of drinking straws, masking tape, paper, and beads. Teams of two then compete to see which sail-car travels the farthest when pushed by the wind (simulated by the use of an electric fan).
Note: This NGSS-aligned activity is part of a unit in which multiple activities are brought together for an all-day school/multi-school concluding “engineering field day” competition.

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Lesson: No Valve in Vain

heart beatIn this activity, teams of students in grades 6 to 8 will learn about the engineering design process and how a one-way valve works by creating heart valves from tape, plastic tubing, and other materials.

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Designing Desert Digs

gila woodpecker in saguaro cactusHigh school students design a permanent guest village within the Saguaro National Park in Arizona after studying the desert ecology. Their designs must provide a true desert experience for visitors while emphasizing sustainable design, protecting the natural environment, and conserving energy and resources.

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Build a Bike Helmet

bike helmetStudents in grades 9 and 10 are introduced to the biomechanical characteristics of helmets and challenged to incorporate them into helmet designs. They come to understand the role of engineering associated with safety products – in this case protecting the brain and neck of a bicyclist in the event of a crash, with the design dependent on the user’s needs and specifications.

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Engineer a Vertical Farm

vertical garden class projectStudents in grades 6 to 8 explore food production problems related to population growth and then engineer a model vertical farm as a potential solution in a fictional community, Greentown, culminating with a presentation to the imaginary city’s “legislators.”

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Straw Bridges

straw bridgeWorking in pairs, students in grades 6 to 8 follow the engineering design process to create the strongest truss bridge using a fixed amount of plastic drinking straws and tape. Let the competition begin!

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Bobsled Blitz

Australia men's bobsleigh team training in PyeongchangStudents in grades 3 to 12 explore the effects of gravity, friction, and air resistance upon acceleration by using the engineering design process to design, build, and test their own bobsleds with the aim of reducing run times with each attempt.

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Wind Chimes

wind chimesHigh school students design and build wind chimes using their knowledge of physics and sound waves, and under such constraints as weight, cost, and the number of musical notes their chimes must generate. They make mathematical computations to determine the pipe lengths. Links to similar activities for younger students included in activity scaling section.

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