Lesson: A Design Squad Sampler
Posted on August 19th, 2011 by Mary Lord
eGFI teachers’ newsletters have featured activities and lesson plans developed by PBS’s Design Squad Nation, with video links and suggested modifications for different age groups. Here’s a sampler:
Filed under: Class Activities, Grades 6-8, Grades 6-8, Grades 9-12, Grades 9-12, Grades K-5, Grades K-5, Lesson Plans | Comments Off on Lesson: A Design Squad Sampler
Tags: Class Activities, Design Squad, Engineering Design, Lesson Plans
In this lesson, students in grades 3-5 are introduced to chemical engineering and learn about its many different applications. They are provided with a basic introduction to matter and its different properties and states. An associated hands-on activity gives students a chance to test their knowledge of the states of matter and how to make observations.
Student teams in grades 9-11 gain a better understanding of heat transfer and engineering by designing and building solar water-heating devices that mimic those used in residences. Once the model devices are constructed, students perform efficiency calculations and compare designs.
In this activity, teams of students 8 – 18 learn about engineering design by constructing rubber-band-powered cars from everyday materials that can travel in a straight line for a distance of at least 3 meters within a 1 meter wide track. They test their rubber-band racers, evaluate their results, and present to the class.
In this lesson, teams of students in grades 3-5 will use their knowledge of tornadoes and damage to design a structure that will withstand wind and protect people from twisters. Each group will create a poster with the name of their engineering firm and a picture of their structure, then present their design to the class.
In this activity, students will learn the challenges of operating a robotic rover on the distant Red Planet and solve problems through a hands-on simulation. After trying to navigate an obstacle course blindfolded and guided only by verbal commands, students will discover that tooling around Mars is no simple joy-stick ride. 
In this lesson, you’ll introduce your students to the four forces of flight — drag, lift, thrust, and weight — through a variety of fun flight experiments. Students will “fly” for short periods and then evaluate factors that might either increase or decrease their “flight” duration. They also will discover how air moving at different speeds over a wing keeps planes aloft.
Basketball not only is fun to play or watch–it packs a lot of math and science in each move. In this lesson, developed by NPR’s Talking Science with John Fontanella, a physicist at the U.S. Naval Academy and author of The Physics of Basketball, students will learn how physics affects the game. What forces are acting on the ball? What must players do to offset these forces? 
