Catching the Wind: Designing Windmills
Science Topic: Wind and Weather
Engineering Field: Mechanical Engineering
Country: Denmark
Storybook: Leif Catches the Wind
This unit guides students to think like mechanical engineers as they use their knowledge of wind to design and create machines that can be used to capture wind energy. The storybook "Leif Catches the Wind" reinforces the science concept of air as wind, and introduces the field of mechanical engineering. The wind turbines found in Leif's home country, Denmark, are used as an example of a renewable energy source and a machine designed in part by mechanical engineers.
Students will look critically at several common machines (mechanical pencils, egg beaters, rolling pins) and diagram how the parts of the machine interact with other parts of the machine and allow the object to function.
Students will then use their mechanical engineering skills to explore different materials and shapes conducive to catching the wind, first by designing sails for small boats and finally for designing windmill blades.
FOSS Connection: Air and Weather
STC Connection: Weather
Water, Water Everywhere: Designing Water Filters
Science Topic: Water and the Water Cycle
Engineering Field: Environmental Engineering
Country: India
Storybook: Saving Salila's Turtle
This unit addresses the increasingly important issue of water quality through lessons that teach students about water contamination and the ways that people ensure the quality of their drinking water.
Students will first think like environmental engineers as they review a mural of a small American community, noting possible sources of pollution and suggesting ways to clean up or eliminate the source of the pollution. Students will then focus on the environmental engineering problem of providing safe drinking water as they plan, construct, test, and improve their own water filters.
FOSS Connection: Water
STC Connection: Land and Water
GEMS Connections: Acid Rain, Involving Dissolving, Liquid Explorations, River Cutters
Insights Connections: Liquids, There is No Away
A Sticky Situation: Designing Walls
Science Topic: Earth Materials
Engineering Field: Materials Engineering
Country: China
Storybook: Yi Min's Great Wall
Everywhere around us, earth materials like pebbles, soil, sand, and silt are used in human creations. What properties make an earth material useful? Different materials have different properties, making them appropriate for different uses. Students learn how materials were combined to create the Great Wall of China and explore which earth materials make the strongest, sturdiest wall. For the design challenge, students construct their own "mini wall of China."
FOSS Connection: Pebbles, Soil and Rock
STC Connection: Soil
GEMS Connection: Stories in Stone
To Get to the Other Side: Designing Bridges
Science Topic: Balance and Forces
Engineering Field: Civil Engineering
Country: United States (Texas)
Storybook: Javier Builds a Bridge
When they are designing bridges, civil engineers integrate the natural science phenomena of balance and motion. In this unit, students explore why bridges are shaped differently. Students distinguish between beam, arch, and suspension bridges and learn how bridge designs counteract and redirect forces and motion. In the culminating design challenge, students design, construct, and test their own bridges.
FOSS Connection: Balance and Motion
STC Connection: Balancing and Weighing
Marvelous Machines: Making Work Easier
Science Topic: Simple Machines
Engineering Field: Industrial Engineering
Country: United States (Boston, Massachusetts)
Storybook: Aisha Makes Work Easier
This unit guides students to learn about how factories use processes, systems, and machines to help make work easier and safer for workers. The storybook "Aisha Makes Work Easier" - set in and around the U.S. city of Boston, Massachusetts - as well as follow-up lessons reinforce concepts about simple machines. Special emphasis is given to the sometimes surprising settings in which we can find simple machines in our everyday world, as well as in a potato chip factory.
The lessons add depth to the notion that simple machines help make work easier, and also introduce the idea that different systems can help make work simpler. Students will compare individual craftsmanship to factory production, and explore the benefits and disadvantages of the assembly line as a production process. Students will measure the force required to complete a given task with and without simple machines, to understand the types of advantages simple machines offer. During the culminating design challenge, students will put their data to the test as they combine a series of simple machines to complete the various tasks of a model potato chip factory and make work easier.
FOSS Connection: Levers & Pulleys
STC Connection: Balance and Weighing
Insights Connection: Lifting Heavy Things
Sounds Like Fun!: Seeing Animal Sounds
Science Topic: Sound
Engineering Field: Acoustical Engineering
Country: Ghana
Storybook: Kwame's Sound
This unit brings new levels of excitement and depth to traditional sound units, reinforcing basic concepts while introducing students to the field of acoustical engineering. The storybook "Kwame's Sound," introduces Kwame, a young, blind drummer from Ghana. Kwame's father, an acoustical engineer, brings Kwame into the forest, where he hears the elephants that are currently the subjects of his father's work. Kwame's father introduces him to the possibility of visually or tactilely representing sound.
The storybook and the unit lessons reinforce the idea that sound is vibration, and the properties of sound include volume and pitch. Students will investigate ways to damp sound, and then will focus on developing a visualization of sound in a way that captures its key elements and communicates the sound clearly to others.
FOSS Connection: Physics of Sound
STC Connection: Sound
Insights Connection: Sound
The Best of Bugs: Designing Hand Pollinators
Science Topic: Insects and Plants
Engineering Field: Agricultural Engineering
Country: Dominican Republic
Storybook: Mariana Becomes a Butterfly
This unit helps students connect their knowledge of insects and plants to a broader understanding of the natural system of pollination. Science concepts about insects, life cycles, pollination, and natural systems are introduced and reinforced, and different aspects of agricultural engineering are explored.
Through lessons and the unit's storybook - set in and around a young girl's butterfly garden in the Dominican Republic - students learn about the importance of balance within natural and agricultural systems, and consider what can happen when this balance goes awry. Students are introduced to agricultural engineering from a broad perspective, with brief overviews of Integrated Pest Management and pollination. For the design challenge students design and improve hand pollinators to work with different model flowers.
FOSS Connection: Insects
STC Connection: The Life Cycle of Butterflies
GEMS Connections: Homes Under the Ground, Buzzing a Hive, Hide a Butterfly, Ladybugs
Just Passing Through: Designing Model Membranes
Science Topic: Organisms and Basic Needs
Engineering Field: Bioengineering
Country: El Salvador
Storybook: Juan Daniel's Fútbol Frog
This unit provides students with the opportunity to apply their knowledge of organisms and their basic needs through a series of activities related to the diverse field of bioengineering.
After reading the storybook "Juan Daniel's Fútbol Frog", students then learn to think like bioengineers, as they play a "concentration" style card game and match technologies with their natural inspirations. Students are then challenged be bioengineers and design a model membrane that can deliver water to an imaginary pet frog in a controlled manner, helping the frog to meet one of its basic needs.
FOSS Connection: Animals Two by Two, Environments, New Plants
STC Connection: Organisms, Animal Studies
GEMS Connection: Terrarium Habitats
Insights Connection: Growing Things, Habitats, Human Body Systems
An Alarming Idea: Designing Alarm Circuits
Science Topic: Electricity
Engineering Field: Electrical Engineering
Country: Australia
Storybook: A Reminder for Emily
This unit helps students to apply their knowledge of electricity, circuits, conductors, and insulators as they design and construct their own alarm circuits. The science concepts of electricity/energy transfer, conductors and insulators, and complete and incomplete circuits are reinforced and students are also introduced to schematic diagrams, a symbol "language" that electrical engineers use to plan and design circuits.
Through lessons and the unit's storybook, which takes place on a station (or ranch) in the Australian outback, students embark on an electricity scavenger hunt, practice drawing schematic diagrams from circuits, and finally design, create, and improve their own alarm circuit and switch to remind them when it is time to do an important chore.
FOSS Connection: Magnetism and Electricity
STC Connection: Electric Circuits, Magnets and Motors
GEMS Connection: Electric Circuits
Insights Connection: Circuits and Pathways
