Adventure Engineering Challenge: Asteroid Impact - Unit

Two images: A map showing the cities, infrastructure, rock composition and geologic features of the state of Alabraska. An artists' rending shows an asteroid entering the Earth's atmosphere. — The collision between Earth and an asteroid a few kilometers in diameter would release as much energy as the simultaneous detonation of several million nuclear bombs. Engineers to the rescue!
copyright
Copyright © (left) Adventure Engineering, Colorado School of Mines, (right) 2001 NASA and Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Collision_d%27une_com%C3%A8te.jpg

Summary

Through this earth science curricular unit composed of eight activities, student teams are presented with the natural disaster scenario that an asteroid will impact the Earth. In response, their engineering challenge is to design the location and size of underground caverns to shelter the people from an uninhabitable Earth for one year. Driven by this adventure scenario, student teams 1) explore general and geological maps of their fictional state called Alabraska, 2) determine the area of their classroom to help determine the necessary habitable cavern size, 3) learn about map scales, 4) test rocks, 5) identify important and not-so-important rock properties for building underground caverns, and 6) choose and defend a final location and size for a survival cavern.

This engineering curriculum aligns to Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).

Engineering Connection

The Asteroid Impact unit provides a project framework in which student groups act as engineering teams to design underground caverns, following the steps of the engineering design process. Real-world engineers work in teams to invent and develop solutions to problems. Following the steps of the engineering design process, they first identify and define the problem or challenge. They gather pertinent information and conduct research to learn about topics related to the problem, and they brainstorm and propose multiple potential solutions. Engineers then evaluate the various possible solutions and select one that best meets the criteria for success. Testing is often used to verify that the proposed solution will solve the problem or challenge. And the final solution is communicated to others.

Educational Standards
Each TeachEngineering lesson or activity is correlated to one or more K-12 science, technology, engineering or math (STEM) educational standards.

All 100,000+ K-12 STEM standards covered in TeachEngineering are collected, maintained and packaged by the Achievement Standards Network (ASN), a project of D2L (www.achievementstandards.org).

In the ASN, standards are hierarchically structured: first by source; e.g., by state; within source by type; e.g., science or mathematics; within type by subtype, then by grade, etc.

See individual lessons and activities for standards alignment.

Unit Schedule

This unit is composed of eight hands-on activities. The unit takes 8-10 class periods (350-450 minutes) total. Conduct the activities in the following order:

Note: The Asteroid Impact Student Workbook contains worksheets for all activities in this unit in one pdf file; the same worksheets are also available as individual attachments in each lesson and activity.

Worksheets and Attachments

President's Memo (pdf)

CRFAO Briefing (pdf)

Asteroid Impact Student Workbook (pdf)

Asteroid Impact Student Workbook Example Answers (pdf)

Alabraska General Map (pdf)

Alabraska Poster Map (pdf)

Alabraska Geology Map (pdf)

Visit [www.teachengineering.org/curricularunits/view/csm_asteroid_tg] to print or download.

Copyright

Supporting Program

Adventure Engineering, Colorado School of Mines

Acknowledgements

Adventure Engineering was supported by National Science Foundation grant nos. DUE 9950660 and GK-12 0086457. However, these contents do not necessarily represent the policies of the National Science Foundation, and you should not assume endorsement by the federal government.

Last modified: March 14, 2023