Plan the way to school. Given a map of a school district, class members portray a transportation consultant hired to develop a bus transportation plan that will pick up the eligible riders and get them to school. The plan must contain...

An interactive offers five questions that challenge scholars to subtract decimals. A diagram featuring a tree and birdhouse with moveable parts is designed to assist mathematicians in finding solutions. Types of questions include...

The design challenge: develop a method to separate steel from aluminum. The first lesson plan in an eight-part series introduces the class to the grand challenge of ciming up with a method to streamline a sorting process at a...

Do some good for the community while learning about engineering. Groups complete a service-based engineering design project over the course of five weeks. The resource provides guidance on how to conduct the project and help pupils get...

Scholars investigate an issue associated with food systems and design their own solutions. Working collaboratively, they follow each step in the design process to complete the 10th activity of the 13-part Our Hungry Planet series.

Design an efficient cereal box. Scholars use set volume criteria to design a cereal box by applying their knowledge of surface area to determine the cost to create the box. They then determine whether their designs will fit on...

Engineering design projects serve as great opportunities for collaborative problem solving. In this case, students work in small groups designing, building, and eventually testing a structure that meets a teacher-specified objective. It...

Make the connection between Hooke's law and elasticity with an activity that introduces the class to the behavior of elastic materials. The resource defines stress and strain to calculate the modules of elasticity of...

Students investigate the broad range of jobs that can be found in the world of design. Students explore sound design, language architecture, etc. Students design a resource book and post it on a website for others to share.

Conduct research focused on improving a current technology by having students work in groups to investigate improvements that could be made to a particular piece of technology. They list the current problems and attempt to develop...

It used watt amount of energy? This resource investigates the power usage of small household appliances. Using a watt meter, groups measure the actual wattage used by an appliance and then calculate the energy used daily. 

The story "Santa's Dirty Socks" provides learners an example of a search algorithm that uses a divide and conquer system similar to a binary search algorithm. The included questions expand upon the concepts that follow the story.

Think you can solve the energy problem? You'll first need to know about current energy use. Analyzing a set of circle graphs lets scholars see where energy consumption is the greatest, both by sector and by household use. They develop a...

Designing fun-size cans ... what fun! Class members use the provided questions to determine the dimensions of a can with a minimum surface area for a given volume. The task allows learners to use graphs or algebraic manipulation to...

Would you have done anything differently? Groups publish one-minute videos on their engineering solutions to the plastic problems. They self-reflect on their work throughout the unit. 

Ready to share the beauty of the inverse function with your classes? This algebra II lesson guides the discovery of an inverse function through a numerical, graphical, and an algebraic approach. Connections are made between the three,...

Technology or engineering teams are given a task to design, construct, and test the efficiency of a structure that will foster an even temperature throughout an entire sunny day. Intended as a long-term project, pupils research, plan,...

Looking for a comprehensive plan for teaching acid-base chemistry? Science scholars discover acid-base interactions through a thoughtfully written unit. The resource is divided into paced activities and individual work designed to...

Class members connect engineering with an understanding of linear programming using a technical resource. Scholars learn about linear programming (linear optimization) and how it applies to engineering design in the first of two modules....

Teach solving for unknowns through a problem-solving approach. The grouping of five lessons progresses from finding an unknown through simple reasoning to solving simultaneous equations involving three and four variables. Each lesson...

Where does the mass for a growing tree come from? Scholars consider a few different hypotheses and guess which is correct. They then analyze data from different experiments to understand which concepts science supports.

Try five problems on triangles. Levels A and B focus on shapes that can be created from right triangles. Level C touches upon the relationship between the area of a six-pointed star and the area of each triangle of which it is composed....

A comprehensive practice exam, this resource covers many areas of chemistry. The test includes 71 multiple choice questions on topics such as problem solving, chemical equations, chemical formulas, thermodynamics, acids and bases, and...

As part of a study of percent and percent change, learners first complete an assessment task with several percent change problems. They then complete an activity using cards to create a diagram expressing percent increases and...