Recently Added Curriculum

Students become engineers whose goal is to research, plan, design, build, test, and improve a mitigation structure/device for fruiting trees/plants in their early stages of growth (sapling) to prevent crop loss. Each group focuses on a different region in the world to research the trees, environmental conditions, causes of crop or tree loss, and available reusable materials. They then engineer a structure that improves the safety of the saplings, while also maintaining the conditions necessary for plant growth, using the six most common types of single-use plastic waste identified by the United Nations Environmental Program. Students use the engineering design process to create, test, and improve their devices.

Students build a functional electrophoresis gel and run samples of food coloring through the gel. As they learn how to build a functioning gel, they get a better understanding of the physics of the gel box and what the results can say about DNA and proteins.

This is a series of short activities that introduce students to physical computing, where they will use a basic breadboard, an Arduino Uno, and components to code and run a single and double LED, a buzzer, and a touch sensor. After successfully coding and wiring the individual components, they have the choice to either set up a realistic traffic light or a buzzer activated by a touch sensor.

Students combine paper strips to measure how much gravitational force the paper can withstand by adding masses to the combined paper strips until they tear. Students compare the strength of one paper strip versus the combination of two, three, four, and five strips. Students cut out paper strips and glue them together using a glue stick or a glue bottle. Students punch holes in the paper strips and tie yarn or string through the hole on the paper strip. As they hang the paper strips on the ring stand, they add weights such as a 100 g mass to the paper. When the paper strips tear, the students will record the mass before the paper broke and the mass that caused the tear in the paper. Students will notice that the paper strips tear at increasing masses because of the strength of the combined paper strips. Students need to understand that composite materials are not created by changing their chemical and physical components. After recording the data, students create a graph with the number of strips on the X-axis and the mass at which the paper tears on the Y-axis. Students compare their findings with the other groups and discuss the results of the project. They discuss why the paper strips could hold more mass as the number of combined paper strips increased. They need to think about what other materials they use in daily life that could be made of composite materials.

Students construct a rope from pieces of aluminum foil. They must determine how to join two pieces together as they explore and learn about structural materials. Students experiment with different methods of connecting the foil to form an aluminum rope and determine which method supports the most weight. Student designs must conform to given constraints, such as required dimensions, quantity of foil, and supplies for joining. After creating their prototype aluminum rope, students test the strength of their aluminum rope under tension by suspending weight from the bottom of the rope and recording the weight that causes failure. As part of the engineering design process, students then have an opportunity to go back and explore alternative designs and make improvements. Students subject their new designs to the original testing methodology and evaluate the effects of their design changes.

Students are presented with the phenomenon of human activities killing coral reefs. They work in groups of 2-5 to create a prototype to help reduce the impact of coral loss from an assigned perspective (e.g., coral bleaching, tourism, pollution, overfishing/dredging). They should already have basic knowledge of the importance of coral reefs and why they need to be saved, as well as previous experience with general research. Students brainstorm solutions, build prototypes, and test those prototypes that will help reduce their human impact or counter the effects of their human impact. The prototype needs to be created using inexpensive materials, and interact with saltwater for certain periods of time (e.g., float, sink, be buoyant in water, filter water). Students present their prototypes to the class at the end of the process. Students have official check-ins with the teacher periodically to gauge progress, and the teacher conducts informal check-ins with students on a regular basis to provide support as needed.

Students hone their understanding of distance and displacement, and how to distinguish between the two. The level of difficulty becomes greater as students move through each section of the activity. This activity can help students to visualize and apply the concepts of distance and displacement to their everyday lives. Students practice measuring distance and displacement by mapping out their routes to school, and by making their own routes that will then be student tested. This activity serves as a good way to reaffirm physics concepts, and as a way for students to practice skills such as measuring and collecting time.

This activity utilizes simulated cancerous and noncancerous cell cultures, probes, and Arduinos to teach students about current research that involves mapping nerve signaling patterns in insect (locust) brains in response to odor molecules produced by healthy versus cancerous cell lines. A connection is made to cellular respiration and metabolism because these are the processes that cause the cell cultures to produce different odorous metabolites. The simulated cultures will contain fluids of varying pH values instead of using solutions with volatile compounds. Students use pH probes in the solutions to observe a number and lighting pattern that is programmed into the code of the Arduino. Students use observations to make conclusions about which patterns represent cancerous cell odors versus healthy cell odors with “known” cell cultures. After recording data, students select “unknown” cultures and determine whether the unknown samples are cancerous or not based on the earlier established patterns. Students graph, analyze, and summarize the data to write a claim, evidence, reasoning (CER) paragraph.

Students act as civil engineers who are assessing the viability of a new housing development along a river. Students use a map of the river and the location of the proposed development to demonstrate where erosion and deposition are occurring along the river. They interpret precipitation data to determine whether flooding will occur. Finally, they create a presentation that includes the best course of action for the city and any flood mitigation strategies necessary.

Students use a block of wood, a spring scale, a timer, and known masses/weights to study and learn about work, power, and energy, and how they are all related, both conceptually and mathematically. Students also learn the factors affecting work and power as they gather data and complete calculations.

Using benchtop experimental techniques, students are allowed options of varying degrees of complexity to test for polyvalency or polyresistance. These investigations allow students to gain an understanding of organisms’ ability to survive challenging conditions, exploit possible evolved adaptations, find new hosts, or establish themselves in new biomes. The implications are to discover how antibiotic resistance may be overcome and how vital crops may be improved using traditional artificial selection methods.

Students embark on an interactive journey through the Engineering Design Process (EDP) to develop, test, and refine a system aimed at enhancing the accuracy of a ball thrown or flicked toward a small target. This hands-on activity serves as an analogy to the process of training machine learning systems, providing students with a tangible understanding of how these systems utilize data and feedback mechanisms to improve performance. Students are also taken from a type of learning they are more familiar with, including visual feedback for the learner, toward an increasingly more abstract method of learning that only involves numeric inputs and outputs.

Students engineer surfaces to control and modify friction and grip as they design and build a tabletop game that uses sliding friction as the main component of its mechanics. Students first observe surface roughness on a variety of surface materials using a digital microscope and explore how engineers use surface modifications to manage friction. They then investigate and compare the friction and grip on multiple surface materials using an inclined plane. Applying the concepts of surface roughness and surface modification, students work as engineering teams to create a tabletop game that uses sliding friction as a main game mechanic. Students go through the steps of the engineering design process, from ideation to prototype development. Students test their own games to balance relevant parameters (surface roughness, speed, board design, game rules, etc.) to improve their prototypes. Students review the prototypes of their peers and offer feedback for further improvements.

Students use the engineering design process while learning about accessibility for people with physical disabilities in Egypt. Students are challenged to create a reusable prototype to help a wheelchair table tennis team pick up ping pong balls. Before building their prototypes, students research the trash and waste problem in Egypt, compiling a list of sustainable materials that can be used to build their devices. Students then individually brainstorm and plan at least two different devices before coming together in teams to develop one group prototype design. After building, testing, and improving their prototypes, student groups present their prototypes to the class.

Students use a hot plate, ice-water bath, and common lab equipment to prepare a viscous or semi-viscous liquid at cold, room, and warm temperature levels. Students measure the mass, volume, and density of their specific liquid to determine the viscosity of their liquid at different temperatures. Students compare their liquid to another group’s liquid to compare and determine any trends with temperature and viscosity.