TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Storing Android Accelerometer Data: App Design
Students work through an online tutorial on MIT's App Inventor to learn how to create Android applications. Using those skills, they create their own applications and use them to collect data from an Android device accelerometer and...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Android Acceleration
Students prepare for the associated activity in which they investigate acceleration by collecting acceleration vs. time data using the accelerometer of a sliding Android device. Based on the experimental set-up for the activity, students...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Program Analysis Using App Inventor
In computer science, program analysis is used to determine the behavior of computer programs. Flow charts are an important tool for understanding how programs work by tracing control flow. Control flow is a graphical representation of...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Passing the Bug
Students apply concepts of disease transmission to analyze infection data, either provided or created using Bluetooth-enabled Android devices. This data collection may include several cases, such as small static groups (representing...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Making the Connection
Graph theory is a visual way to represent relationships between objects. One of the simplest uses of graph theory is a family tree that shows how different people are related. Another application is social networks like Facebook, where a...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Curiosity Killed the App
Students gain experience with the software/system design process, closely related to the engineering design process, to solve a problem. First, they learn about the Mars Curiosity rover and its mission, including the difficulties that...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Does It Work? Test and Test Again
Testing is critical to any design, whether it be in the creation of new software or building a bridge across a wide river. Despite risking the quality of the design, the testing stage is often hurried in order to get products to market....
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Do You See What I See?
Young scholars research OCR and OCR techniques and then apply those methods to the design challenge by developing algorithms capable of correctly reading a number on a typical high school sports scoreboard.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Graph Theory in Drama
Students use graph theory to create social graphs for their own social networks and apply what learn to create a graph representing the social dynamics found in a dramatic text. Students then derive meaning based on what they know about...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Handheld Trigonometry
In addition to understanding the concept of similar right triangles and how they apply to trigonometric ratios, students explore a clinometer app, and discover how it can be used to test the mathematics underpinning trigonometry.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Using J Unit
Learners focus on the testing phase of the design process by considering how they have tested computer programs in the past and learning about a new method called JUnit to test programs in the future. JUnit is a testing method that is...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Python Calculus
Learners analyze a cartoon of a Rube Goldberg machine and a Python programming language script to practice engineering analysis. This exercise enables students to see the parallels between a more traditional mechanical engineering design...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Antimatter Matters
Antimatter, the charge reversed equivalent of matter, has captured the imaginations of science fiction fans for years as a perfectly efficient form of energy. While normal matter consists of atoms with negatively charged electrons...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: What Is Gis?
Geographic information systems (GIS) are important technology that allows rapid study and use of spatial information. GIS have become increasingly prevalent in industry and the consumer/internet world in the last 20 years. Historically,...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Projections and Coordinates: Turning a 3 D Earth Into Flatlands
Projections and coordinates are key advancements in the geographic sciences that allow us to better understand the nature of the Earth and how to describe location. These innovations in describing the Earth are the basis for everything...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (GPGP) is an interesting and somewhat publicized environmental problem. A swirling soup of trash up to 10 meters deep and just below the water surface is composed mainly of non-degradable plastics. These...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Imaging Dna Structure
Students are introduced to the latest imaging methods used to visualize molecular structures and the method of electrophoresis that is used to identify and compare genetic code (DNA). Students should already have basic knowledge of...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Restriction Enzymes and Dna Fingerprinting
The discovery of restriction enzymes and their applications in DNA analysis has proven to be essential for biologists and chemists. This lesson focuses on restriction enzymes and their applications to DNA analysis and DNA fingerprinting....
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Archimedes' Principle, Pascal's Law and Bernoulli's Principle
Learners are introduced to Pascal's law, Archimedes' principle, and Bernoulli's principle through problems and engineering applications.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Above Ground Storage Tanks in the Houston Ship Channel
Students are provided with an introduction to above-ground storage tanks, which sets the stage for the real-world engineering challenge presented in the associated activity- to design new and improved storage tanks that can survive storm...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Forced to Fracture
Young scholars learn how forces affect the human skeletal system through fractures, and why certain bones are more likely to break than others depending on their design and use in the body. They learn how engineers and doctors...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Introduction to Genetic Engineering and Its Applications
Students learn how engineers apply their understanding of DNA to manipulate specific genes to produce desired traits, and how engineers have used this practice to address current problems facing humanity.
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Basically Acids
Learners learn the basics of acid/base chemistry in a fun, interactive way by studying instances of acid/base chemistry found in popular films such as Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and National Treasure. Students learn what...
TeachEngineering
Teach Engineering: Projectile Magic
Students watch video clips from October Sky and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone to learn about projectile motion. They explore the relationships between displacement, velocity and acceleration and calculate simple projectile...