Handout
Khan Academy

Khan Academy: Building Ant Bot

For Students 9th - 10th
Learn how to build a robot that can mimic basic ant walking & running behavior.
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Hare and Snail Challenges

For Teachers 4th - 8th
Students extend the ideas learned in the maze challenge in this unit with a focus more on the robot design. They learn how to design the gear train from the LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT servomotor to the wheel to make the LEGO taskbot go faster...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Music by Touch

For Teachers 4th - 8th
Through a hands-on design challenge involving LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots, students learn programming skills and logic design as they program robot computers to play sounds and rotate a wheel when a touch sensor is pressed, and then...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Follow the Light

For Teachers 4th - 8th
A lesson involving LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots and light sensors, student pairs program the robots to follow a flashlight as its light beam moves around.
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Don't Bump Into Me!

For Teachers 4th - 8th
Students' understanding of how robotic ultrasonic sensors work is reinforced in a design challenge involving LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots and ultrasonic sensors.
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Parallel and Intersecting Lines: A Collision Course?

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Students act as civil engineers developing safe railways as a way to strengthen their understanding of parallel and intersecting lines. Using pieces of yarn to visually represent line segments, students lay down "train tracks" on a...
Lesson Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: What Are Gears? What Do They Do?

For Teachers 4th - 8th
Students are introduced to an important engineering element- the gear. This prepares them to apply this knowledge in four associated activities in order to create successful solutions to design challenges that use LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Timing a Speedbot!

For Teachers 4th - 6th Standards
Students strengthen their communication skills by first learning the meaning of base units and derived units. Then, working in groups, students measure the time for LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots and calculate the robots' average speeds at...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: The Car With a Lot of Potential

For Teachers 4th - 5th
Working in teams, students perform quantitative observational experiments on the motion of LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robotic vehicles powered by the stored potential energy of rubber bands. Students understand that through the manipulation of...
Lesson Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: How Does a Light Sensor Work?

For Teachers 4th - 8th
A mini-activity, which uses LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT intelligent bricks and light sensors gives young scholars a chance to investigate how light sensors function in preparation for the associated activity involving the light sensors and...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Foucault Pendulum

For Teachers 5th - 7th
Students learn about the Foucault pendulum, an engineering tool used to demonstrate and measure the Earth's rotation. Student groups then create small experimental versions, each comprised of a pendulum and a video camera mounted on a...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Fence That Farmland!

For Teachers 3rd - 5th
Students develop and solidify their understanding of the concept of perimeter as they engage in a portion of the civil engineering task of land surveying, using the technology of a LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robot to automate this task.
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Line Follower Challenge

For Teachers 4th - 8th
Student groups are challenged to program robots with light sensors to follow a black line. Learning both the logic and skills behind programming robots for this challenge helps students improve their understanding of how robots work, and...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Determining Concentration

For Teachers 5th - 7th
Students quantify the percent of light reflected from solutions containing varying concentrations of red dye using LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT bricks and light sensors. They begin by analyzing a set of standard solutions with known...
Lesson Plan
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: How Does a Sound Sensor Work?

For Teachers 4th - 8th
Students learn about how sound sensors work, reinforcing their similarities to the human sense of hearing. This lesson and its associated activity enable students to appreciate how robots can take sensor input and use it to make...
Lesson Plan
Other

Tufts University: Stomp: Nxt Activity Database

For Teachers 9th - 10th
A collection of lesson plans that can be used with the Lego Mindstorms NXT robots. Lesson plans include procedure, student handouts, and programming code.
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Robot Sensors and Sound

For Teachers 4th - 8th
Using microphones connected to computers running Audacity software, student teams experiment with machine-generated sounds and their own voices and observe the resulting sound waves on the screen, helping them to understand that sounds...
Article
Khan Academy

Khan Academy: Bonus Points

For Students 9th - 10th
After completing the electrical engineering project called Ant Bot, improve your machine and share your ideas with others.
Article
Khan Academy

Khan Academy: Bonus Points

For Students 9th - 10th
Take part in some challenges after completing electrical engineering project, ant bot. SHare your ideas, and see how others have improved thier bots.
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Haptics: Touch Command

For Teachers 6th - 8th
Students experience haptic (the sense of touch) feedback by using LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots and touch sensors to emulate touch feedback recognition. With four touch sensors connected to LEGO NXTs, they design sensor attachments that...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Nxt Ball Shooter

For Teachers 4th - 8th
This activity helps students understand how a motor in a LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robot uses electricity produced by the battery to move a robot to do useful work in the form of throwing a ball. Students relate the concepts of electricity and...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Tug of War Battle Bots

For Teachers 9th - 10th
Students are introduced to the concepts of torque, power, friction and gear ratios. Teams modify two robotic LEGO vehicles by changing their gear ratios, wheel sizes, weight and engine power, while staying within a limit of points to...
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Trebuchet Launch

For Teachers 4th - 6th
Students work as engineers to design and test trebuchets (in this case LEGO MINDSTORMS robots) that can launch objects. During the testing stage, they change one variable at a time to study its effect on the outcome of their designs....
Activity
TeachEngineering

Teach Engineering: Save the Stuffed Animal! Push & Pull

For Teachers 1st - 3rd
Students develop an understanding of the concepts of "push" and "pull" as they "save" stuffed animals from danger using LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots. After learning more about the concepts through a robot demonstration, students explore...