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Jazz and Math: Rhythmic Innovations
Young scholars watch a segment of the PBS Ken Burns JAZZ documentary about Buddy Bolden creating the "Big Four." They compare and contrast the rhythms of marches and jazz based on the examples in the film, and explore notation,...
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Sampling Carbon Dioxide
Students perform an experiment to determine which source of gas (their breath, exhaust from a car, or the air in the classroom) has a greater concentration of carbon dioxide. Students compare the colors of BTB solutions after...
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TE Lesson: Energy Transfer in Musical Instruments
Students study concepts of energy and energy transfer. They look at how these concepts apply to musical instruments. They study the law of conservation of energy. They use the concepts studied in the lesson to design a musical instrument.
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TE Lesson: Factors Affecting Friction
Students investigate the effect of weight on normal friction or the friction due to surface roughness. They tell about the effects of contact area that occurs as a result of molecular attraction by looking at data on line graphs.
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Go with the Flow
Students gain an understanding of the difference between electrical conductors and insulators, and experience recognizing a conductor by its material properties. They build a conductivity tester to determine whether different objects are...
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Getting to the Point
Young scholars determine location by using the technique of triangulation. They imagine that they are out in the wilderness and have come to the top of a ridge. How can one identify the ridge on the topo map? How can one figure out where...
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Harnessing Wind
Students explore the ways that engineers study and harness the wind. They study the different kinds of winds and how to measure wind direction. In addition, students learn how air pressure creates winds and how engineers build and test...
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TE Lesson: Habitat Mapping
Middle schoolers examine the current technologies used in mapping resources in the marine environment. They look at remote sensing, sounding, and underwater vehicles. They examine image from the benthic habitat produced by the GIS in...
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TE Lesson: GPS on the Move
Students participate in a scavenger hunt and a drawing activity to examine the use of Global Positioning Systems including a handheld GPS receiver for personal navigation. They practice using the GPS receivers while collecting data from...
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How Do Things Fall?
Students study forces by examining the force of gravitational attraction. They observe how objects fall and measure the force of gravitational attraction upon objects. Students discover that, since gravitational constants are different...
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How Should Our Gardens Grow?
Students examine different types of land use by humans and evaluate the ways land is used in their local community. They also consider the environmental effects of the different types of land use. Students assume the role of community...
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How Much Sugar is in Bubble Gum?
Students conduct an experiment to determine the percentage of sugar in various types of gum. They weigh the gum after chewing it to determine the amount of mass lost from each piece of gum, analyze the data, and create a graph of the...
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TE Lesson: I've Got Issues!
Students study environmental issues from different perspectives. They look at the issues from the view of both preservationists and conservationists as they identify themselves with one group or the other. They determine how teamwork...
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TE Lesson: I've Gotta Get Some Air
Students investigate types and sources of indoor air pollutions both at home and in school. They decide on how to prevent poor indoor air quality. They debate smoking in order to determine how language usage can be an influence in...
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Interactions Everywhere!
Students examine interactions within the environment and environmental engineering careers. They discuss and view photos of natural and manmade environments, explore various websites, create a web to identify interactions between living...
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Let's Heat Things Up!
Students build and evaluate simple models to understand the greenhouse effect. They explore the role of increased greenhouse gas concentration in global warming, and the implications of global warming theory for engineers, themselves...
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Marine Animal Tracking
Young scholars engage in a lesson which serves as an introduction to the ideas and implications of animal tracking. They monitor animal foraging behavior on a spatial scale. The students break into groups and track each other's movements...
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Move It!
Students observe a demonstration presented by the teacher covering different types of energy. They participate in an experiment where they study numerous physics vocabulary words and visit websites that demonstrate examples of these...
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Medical Instrumentation
Students analyze how medical devices that help the human body function. They work in pairs or groups to draw multiple views of the medical device and describe how engineering is used by biomedial engineers.
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Navigating by the Numbers
Middle schoolers observe how math is important in navigation and engineering. They study how surveyors use math and science to calcute, count, measure, label, and indicate distances on a map. They estimate specific distances.
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One Path
Students discover that charge movement through a circuit depends on the resistance and arrangement of the circuit components. In a hands-on activity, students build and investigate the characteristics of series circuits. In another...
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Oil Spill
Young scholars explore an important role of environmental engineers by studying the Exxon Valdez oil spill. They experiment with different strategies in order to clean up their own manufactured oil spill.
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TE Lesson: Pollution Solutions
Young scholars study how industrial technology helps clean up and prevent air pollution. They role play as engineers to examine methods of engineering pollutant recovery methods such as scrubbers, electrostatic precipitators, cyclones,...
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TE Lesson: Out of Breath
Students study the parts of the human respiratory system while examining the gas exchange that takes place in the lungs. They make a model lung. They look at how the respiratory system is affected by spaceflight.