Design a birdhouse to keep a bird warm in the winter or cool in the summer sun.

Working in small teams, participants learn about such concepts as energy efficiency, properties of light, and heating and cooling principles while they design, build, and test an energy-efficient roof for a birdhouse.

With program staff, each team tests several roofing materials under a heat lamp and records how much the heat rises over time. Using this information, they design a composite roof to achieve their design goal of keeping the birdhouse warm or cool, then test again to see if they have engineered a successful solution. Visitors may keep redesigning and retesting as many times as schedules permit, focusing on using the testing part of the engineering design cycle to guide data-driven design.

Play the Aviary Architect game!

Supplemental Material

• Worksheet (pdf)
• Educator's Guide (pdf)