Students are engaged to consider the challenges faced by people in wheelchairs and develop remedial strategies following engineering design. While modern building designs follow specific regulations to provide safe accessibility to wheelchairs, many older neighborhoods still contain designs inaccessible and dangerous for people in wheelchairs. For example, many ramp designs have slopes too large or…
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Teams of student engineers are challenged to design, build and test a prototype pirate ship design. The prototype ship is tested for its ability to float and to sail around obstacles in a baby pool while carrying a load consisting of a crew, food, and a retrieved hidden treasure. Students use force diagrams to communicate…
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Student engineering teams assist a city that is building a new soccer field for the World Cup competition. To protect the city’s precious groundwater, the city requires a field that is as environmentally sustainable as possible, but also meets the needs of professional players. Students are challenged to design the optimum layered soil arrangement (soil…
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Student teams engineer a computer program that sorts rocks bas on properties in order to identify a specific rock within a Rock Family. Teams identify properties of rocks, then utilize a dichotomous key to sort them by the properties. Students collaboratively engineer a PowerPoint with guiding questions to identify each rock type; thereby, generating a…
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Student teams utilize the engineering process to build an eco-friendly, cost-effective packaging prototype for shipping products. In order to effectively complete the design challenge, students research recyclable packaging options for diminishing the amount of waste that ends up in the landfill. Teams follow the engineering design process to design a prototype, and utilize a Decision Analysis…
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In this unit, students will explore the relationships between force, motion, and gravity as they team up with Underwriters Laboratories to create a prototype for use in emergency situations, such as a house fire, to break a person’s fall. Teams of students will work collaboratively to employ the engineering design process as they design an…
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Students assume the role of propulsion engineers and aerodynamicists on collaborative Air Vehicle teams. They are challenged to employ the iterative nature of the engineering design process to design, build, and test a nose cone system for a air pressurized-air and water fueled soda bottle rocket. Students will conduct research based on their role, utilize…
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Students are challenged to design an ergonomic automobile driver’s seat. They will take into consideration body proportion measurements and comfort for the average-size students in their class. Students will engineer the seat based on data collected for student population measurements.
In this lesson students will design a working trebuchet for maximum accuracy, distance and force using the engineering design process. Students will utilize the measurement formulas to calculate kinetic and potential energy and therefore create a trebuchet for a specific function (ex. Hitting a target, knocking down a wall or launching for distance).
Through inquiry-based learning, students are able to experience and investigate the biogeochemical cycles. They utilize the engineering design process in order to design and construct compost bins. They also design a method for scientifically testing the validity of snack food companies’ advertisements that their packages are manufactured with 100% compostable materials. Throughout the composting process,…
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