Students learn about weight by building a spring scale and observing how it responds to objects with different masses.

Students engage in the second design challenge of the unit, which is an extension of the maze challenge they solved in the first lesson/activity of this unit. Students extend the ideas learned in the maze challenge with a focus more on the robot design. Gears are a very important part of any machine, particularly when it has a power source such as engine or motor. Specifically, students learn how to design the gear train from the LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT servomotor to the wheel to make the LEGO taskbot go faster or slower. A PowerPoint® presentation, pre/post quizzes and a worksheet are provided.

This lesson introduces the ways that engineers study and harness the wind. Students will learn about the different kinds of winds and how to measure wind direction. In addition, students will learn how air pressure creates winds and how engineers build and test wind turbines to harness energy from wind.

In this lesson, students investigate sources of fossil fuels, particularly oil. Students will learn how engineers and scientists look for oil by taking core samples from a model of the Earth. Also, students will explore and analyze oil consumption and production in the United States and around the world.

The purpose of this activity is to demonstrate some of the different parts of an airplane through the construction of a paper airplane. Students will build several different kinds of paper airplanes in order to figure out what makes an airplane fly and what can be changed to influence the flying characteristics of an airplane.

Students learn about the anatomy of the ear and how the ears work as a sound sensor. Ear anatomy parts and structures are explained in detail, as well as how sound is transmitted mechanically and then electrically through them to the brain. Students use LEGO® robots with sound sensors to measure sound intensities, learning how the NXT brick (computer) converts the intensity of sound measured by the sensor input into a number that transmits to a screen. They build on their experiences from the previous activities and establish a rich understanding of the sound sensor and its relationship to the TaskBot's computer.

Students learn about the heart and its role at the center of the human cardiovascular system. In the associated activity, students play out a scenario in which they are biomedical engineers asked to design artificial hearts. They learn about the path of blood flow through the heart and use that knowledge to evaluate designs of artificial hearts on the market.

This lesson describes how the circulatory system works, including the heart, blood vessels and blood. Students learn about the chambers and valves of the heart, the difference between veins and arteries, and the different components of blood. This lesson also covers the technology engineers have developed to repair the heart if it is damaged. Students also understand how the circulatory system is affected during spaceflight (e.g., astronauts lose muscle in their heart during space travel).

Students learn about the form and function of the human heart through lecture, research and dissection. They brainstorm ideas that pertain to various heart conditions and organize these ideas into categories that help them research possible solutions. An expert in the field of cardiac valve research was interviewed for this lesson and shares his ideas with the class. Students conclude by researching various possible heart defects.

Students' eyes are opened to the value of creative, expressive and succinct visual presentation of data, findings and concepts. Student pairs design, redesign and perform simple experiments to test the differences in thermal conductivity (heat flow) through different media (foil and thin steel). Then students create visual diagrams of their findings that can be understood by anyone with little background on the subject, applying their newly learned art vocabulary and concepts to clearly communicate their results. The principles of visual design include contrast, alignment, repetition and proximity; the elements of visual design include an awareness of the use of lines, color, texture, shape, size, value and space. If students already have data available from other experiments, have them jump right into the diagram creation and critique portions of the activity.

Through a teacher demonstration using water, heat and food coloring, students see how convection moves the energy of the Sun from its core outwards. Students learn about the three different modes of heat transfer (convection, conduction, radiation) and how they are related to the Sun and life on our planet.

Students explore heat transfer and energy efficiency using the context of energy efficient houses. They gain a solid understanding of the three types of heat transfer: radiation, convection and conduction, which are explained in detail and related to the real world. They learn about the many ways solar energy is used as a renewable energy source to reduce the emission of greenhouse gasses and operating costs. Students also explore ways in which a device can capitalize on the methods of heat transfer to produce a beneficial result. They are given the tools to calculate the heat transferred between a system and its surroundings.

Heat transfer is an important concept that is a part of everyday life yet often misunderstood by students. In this lesson, students learn the scientific concepts of temperature, heat and the transfer of heat through conduction, convection and radiation. These scientific concepts are illustrated by comparison to magical spells used in the Harry Potter stories.

Students discover the scientific basis for the use of inclined planes. Using a spring scale, a bag of rocks and an inclined plane, student groups explore how dragging objects up a slope is easier than lifting them straight up into the air. Also, students are introduced to the scientific method and basic principles of experimentation. To conclude, students imagine and design their own uses for inclined planes.

Students learn about weight and drag forces by making paper helicopters and measuring how adding more weight affects the time it takes for the helicopters to fall to the ground.

Students gain a basic understanding of the engineering components behind telecommunications, in particular, the way telephone communication works to link one phone to another for conventional landline and cellular telephones. During this entire-class activity, students simulate how phone calls are connected by acting out a variety of searches for both local and long-distance calls. Students end up with a good understanding of how phone calls are transmitted from callers to recipients.

Students use a hurricane tracking map to measure the distance from a specific latitude and longitude location of the eye of a hurricane to a city. Then they use the map's scale factor to convert the distance to miles. They also apply the distance formula by creating an x-y coordinate plane on the map. Students are challenged to analyze what data might be used by computer science engineers to write code that generates hurricane tracking models. Then students analyze a MATLAB® computer code that uses the distance formula repetitively to generate a table of data that tracks a hurricane at specific time intervals. Students come to realize that using a computer program to generate the calculations (instead of by hand) is very advantageous for a dynamic situation like tracking storm movements. Their inspection of some MATLAB code helps them understand how it communicates what to do using mathematical formulas, logical instructions and repeated tasks. They also conclude that the example program is too simplistic to really be a useful tool; useful computer model tools must necessarily be much more complex.

Students randomly select jelly beans (or other candy) that represent genes for several human traits such as tongue-rolling ability and eye color. Then, working in pairs (preferably of mixed gender), students randomly choose new pairs of jelly beans from those corresponding to their own genotypes. The new pairs are placed on toothpicks to represent the chromosomes of the couple's offspring. Finally, students compare genotypes and phenotypes of parents and offspring for all the "couples" in the class. In particular, they look to see if there are cases where parents and offspring share the exact same genotype and/or phenotype, and consider how the results would differ if they repeated the simulation using more than four traits.

This activity simulates the extraction of limited, nonrenewable resources from a "mine," so students can experience first-hand how resource extraction becomes more difficult over time. Students gather data and graph their results to determine the peak in resource extraction. They learn about the limitations of nonrenewable resources, and how these resources are currently used.