Curated OER
Designing a Crew Exploration Vehicle
Take your class on an out-of-this-world adventure with this fun engineering design instructional activity. Working in small groups, young scientists design, build, and test crew exploration vehicles using some creativity, teamwork, and...
Bonneville
Can Portable PV Charge Vehicles?
Take charge of learning about electric vehicles. Instructors first provide the class with information about PV modules and batteries. Learners then conduct an experiment where they connect PV modules in series and in parallel to...
Teach Engineering
Spool Racer Design and Competition
Wind it up and let it go. Individuals build a basic spool racer in the second portion of a six-part unit on energy. After receiving three criteria, pupils modify their designs to meet the new challenge. Pairs compete against each other...
Teach Engineering
Energy Storage Derby and Proposal
Small groups use the engineering design process to build and test a vehicle capable of carrying 250 grams a distance of five meters. The design must allow for the storage of potential energy and turn it into motion, allowing the...
Teach Engineering
Engineering Brainstorming
Here is a lesson that offers a great hybrid of forming new skills and using current knowledge to come up with a plan. The class brainstorms information they would need to know or already know about hybrid vehicles. They then group the...
It's About Time
Accidents
Did you know that cars weren't designed for passenger safety until the 1960s? The lesson starts with a quick quiz on automobile safety. Then, scholars evaluate three cars for their safety features. This is the third in a set of nine...
NASA
Roving on the Moon
Take a rover out for a test drive. The challenge is to build a rubber-band-powered rover out of cardboard. Individuals or groups work at making modifications to a prototype rover to increase its efficiency.
NASA
Space Transportation: Reshooting the Moon
What does it take to get stuff to the Moon? Design teams create subsystems for a space transportation system to go to the Moon. The teams study Earth transportation components along with historical space transportation systems to guide...
NASA
Beginning Engineering, Science, and Technology
Space, the Final Frontier. The nine NASA-created challenges in this unit are designed to teach class members the engineering design process. Each challenge comes with teacher and student pages that can be used individually or as a...
Discovery Education
Future Fleet
Turn your pupils into engineers who are able to use scientific principals to design a ship. This long-term project expects pupils to understand concepts of density, buoyancy, displacement, and metacenter, and apply them to constructing a...
Teach Engineering
How a Hybrid Works
Work with your class to connect series and parallel circuits to hybrid cars. The lesson introduces basic circuit diagrams before having scholars apply the understanding of the difference between parallel and series circuits to hybrid cars.
Curated OER
Scooting Along!
Students investigate how Newton's Third Law affects vehicle design. In this Newton's Third Law lesson, students use a web site to research Newton, his third law, and how to design a vehicle that uses a balloon for power. They sketch and...
Curated OER
Vehicle Graphic Organizer
A two-slide presentation shows learners how to design a car. The first slide has them list the color, number of wheels, and a drawing of the vehicle. The second slide has them list all of the materials they will need to build it.