TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Simple Machines From Pyramids to Skyscrapers
Simple machines are devices with few or no moving parts that make work easier, and which people have used to provide mechanical advantage for thousands of years. Students learn about the wedge, wheel and axle, lever, inclined plane,...
TryEngineering
Try Engineering: Simple Kitchen Machines
Team lesson focuses on the different types of simple machines, how they work, and how they can be found in daily life.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Modern Day Pyramids
Students investigate the ways in which ancient technologies - six types of simple machines and combinations - are used to construct modern buildings. As they work together to solve a design problem (designing and building a modern...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Putting Robots to Work With Force & Friction
Students learn about the concept of pushing, as well as the relationship between force and mass. Students practice measurement skills using pan scales and rulers to make predictions about mass and distance. A LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robot is...
Other
Ontario Council for Technology Education: Designing and Testing a Crane [Pdf]
By the end of this project, students will be familiar with the 6 different simple machines and will be able to identify how these machines are used in products and tools they use on a daily basis. They will investigate how mechanical...
Beacon Learning Center
Beacon Learning Center: How Can We Move Our Principal?
In this problem solving exercise, students must decide which simple machine would work best in different situations, in order to help the principal manoeuvre himself after he has hurt his leg and can't walk. The site has a good tutorial...
Better Lesson
Better Lesson: Engineering Solutions
Anyone who has attempted one of those "claw machine" games at local restaurants or retailers knows how impossible it seems to win. This activity will get students using the engineering design process to develop a claw that will actually...
TryEngineering
Try Engineering: Engineering Ups and Downs
Engineering design lesson examines the principles behind working elevators. Teams of students explore how elevators work, then design, build, and evaluate their own elevator to service a toy car garage.
Curated OER
Integrated Publishing/block & Tackle (Or Pulley)
Very substantial four-page article on how the block & tackle works. (It's a simple machine -- a pulley.) Lots of illustration. Mechanical advantage, formulae, solved problems, all here. Good source for info.
Curated OER
Integrated Publishing/block & Tackle (Or Pulley)
Very substantial four-page article on how the block & tackle works. (It's a simple machine -- a pulley.) Lots of illustration. Mechanical advantage, formulae, solved problems, all here. Good source for info.
Curated OER
Integrated Publishing/block & Tackle (Or Pulley)
Very substantial four-page article on how the block & tackle works. (It's a simple machine -- a pulley.) Lots of illustration. Mechanical advantage, formulae, solved problems, all here. Good source for info.