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
Kids love exploring the world around them, and Earth Day offers a great way to introduce them to environmental science and engineering. The following sampler includes activities, lessons, and resources that promote green engineering and science learning.
Students in grades 3-5 brainstorm ideas for board game formats. They then work in teams to design, create, and test games in which players must think of alternative uses (recycling) for used products.
Having trouble finding quality materials to teach the open-ended investigations and crosscutting concepts envisioned by the Next Generation Science Standards? OpenSciEd has developed free, NGSS-aligned curricular units for middle schools (grades 6 to 8) along with teacher professional development. 
Students in grades 5 to 7 learn about how muscles work and follow the engineering design process to create their own biomedical device to aid in the recovery of a strained bicep. They discover the importance of rest to muscle recovery and that muscles (just like engineers!) work together to achieve a common goal.
Students in grades 6-8 use their knowledge about how healthy heart valves function to design, construct, and implant prototype replacement mitral valves for hypothetical patients’ hearts. In the process, they discover the pros and cons of different types of artificial heart valves based on materials, surgery requirements, and lifespan.
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.”
High school students analyze an assortment of popular inventions to determine their intended beneficiaries as well as who has access to, might be harmed by, and is profiting from them. They then develop and apply class standards for ethical design to re-imagine the devices in a way that would do more good for humanity.
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.
