Design your own video game, engineer accident-proof highways, or even develop a new phone app! The Engineering Design Model can be used with all ages and in all subject areas to create a product, system or service. The resource explains...

Design and construct buildings with rooftop gardens. Junior engineers work in groups to build two buildings and then perform experiments to determine whether or not a garden affects the building temperatures. They graph and interpret...

Engineering design projects serve as great opportunities for collaborative problem solving. In this case, students work in small groups designing, building, and eventually testing a structure that meets a teacher-specified objective. It...

Twisting and turning through the sky, roller coasters are popular attractions at amusement parks around the world, but how exactly do they work? Explore the physics behind these thrilling rides with an engineering design activity....

Three, two, one, blast off to a better understanding of force and motion with this exciting science lesson! Beginning with a discussion about rockets and gravity, young scientists go on to complete a series of worksheets about net...

Students identify relationships between scientific concepts and their historical roots. They discuss and debate issues of ethics in science, specifically on the concept of genetic engineering and describe the processes of cloning and...

Always strive to make things better. The second of three activities in the Experimenting with Solar Heaters unit has learners design new solar heaters that are more effective compared to the simple models they used in the previous lesson...

How high did the ball go? Engineering teams build a working pneumatic system that launches a ball into the air. The teams vary the amount of pressure and determine the accompanying height of the ball. An extension of building a device to...

In this mind-bending activity, young engineers explore this question of whether or not light actually bends. Using holographic diffraction gratings, groups design and build a spectrograph. The groups then move on research a problem...

Wait til your class gets their hands on this! Aspiring engineers design a working robotic arm in the fifth and final installment in a series of ocean exploration lessons. Pupils learn about the use of underwater robots in ocean...

Don't twist and turn looking for a resource. The first installment of a six-part series teaches young engineers about the five fundamental forces of compression, tension, shear, bending, and torsion. These forces help explain different...

Young scholars study engineering design.  In this engineering music lesson students plan and construct a design while working in groups. 

Talk about Velcro®, Gecko Tape, WhalePower turbine blades, and other innovations that mimic nature to inspire your STEM or engineering class. This set of worksheets gets them thinking about imitating nature in terms of sustainable...

Students investigate the concepts related to the practice of designing and building large scale buildings. They conduct research using the internet and other resources in order to apply mathematics and architectural design principals in...

Let the resource stretch the minds of your young scientists with a lesson about tensile strength and stiffness of materials. Groups consider how easily materials stretch and relate this property to engineering design.

Young scientists present their experimental designs from the previous experiment. The ninth instructional activity in the series outlines what learners should present, what class discussions should happen, and the solution NASA came up...

Drop a perfect project into your lesson plans. Groups use different building materials to create models of parachutes for food drops. After testing out their prototypes, they make improvements to their designs.

If I change the length, will they work better? After brainstorming the variables of wind turbine blade design, groups choose one variable to isolate and test. The groups then present their data to the class in order for all to have the...

Challenge young engineers to design a one-bedroom scale house that would collect and maintain as much heat as possible. Special constraints must be adhered to, but creativity is also allowed. Diagrams and background information are...

Class members become tree huggers with this terrific study of biodiversity among trees! They do so by examining different characteristics of trees: shape, leaves, bark, fruit or seeds, etc. After examining five concepts, they use their...

No vacuum cleaner? No problem, just build your own. Scholars apply knowledge of currents to build a model of either a vacuum clear, a hair dryer, or a toy car. While the class completes the activity, instructors consider gender...

Students are introduced to the concept of thermodynamics. In groups, they participate in experiments in which they discover how potential energy converts into kinetic energy. They use the internet to research the components of a...

Learners design and test packaging an egg. In this engineering design lesson, students design and test packaging that will keep an egg from cracking when dropped from a certain height.

Seventh graders conduct an investigation into the design of bridges and their construction. Students design bridges and draw detailed plans. For assessment they construct a model of a bridge that is made entirely of toothpicks. Students...