How large can a population become? The fifth installment of a nine-part unit teaches young ecologists about limiting factors that determine the carrying capacity of species in the Sonoran Desert. Here is a PowerPoint to help present this...

Fabulous! Your 5th graders should love this project. As an ongoing lesson throughout the year students use temperature probes to record outside temperature and then document their data using spreadsheets. They use their weather data and...

How tall is your marshmallow structure? With limited supplies (including uncooked spaghetti noodles, masking tape, and one marshmallow), teams endeavor to support the marshmallow atop the tallest spaghetti structure they can build....

Complete teacher narrative and presentation slides for teaching about Earth's water make up the bulk of this lesson plan. Embedded within the slide show, you will find videos about the water cycle, keeping track of the limited supply of...

Small groups work together to create a tower out of 15 pipe cleaners under a set of imposed limitations. First, restrict team members to use only one arm, and then remove the use of spoken language. There is also a time limit. The...

Individuals design and build a set of shock absorbers to protect their astronauts when they land. Using a limited amount of supplies, pupils build a system that will keep two large marshmallows from flying out of a cup when it lands...

Can you build it? Yes you can! This interactive game includes four design challenges presented on separate cards. The cards outline the challenges with limited restrictions but with an end goal in mind. The competitions include building...

Class members use an applet on the Internet to simulate the spread of a disease. The simulation allows individuals to determine two nodes to vaccinate to limit the number of nodes infected. By running several simulations, scholars...

Let your class become master builders. Scholars use Legos® or K'nex® pieces to create a structure that looks like an actual building in existence. The time limit is 12 minutes, so you better start building!

Every child's dream: stuffing as much candy into a bag as possible. Doing this, though, requires a nice sturdy bag. Scholars design the sturdiest bag they can and test the limits of those bag using a sweet treat!

Potentially get all the way across the water. The fourth of five design challenges asks pupils to develop a plan for a paddle-powered boat that will store its energy. Given a limited number of supplies, the class members design, build,...

The sky's the limit when learning about engineering. Future engineers conduct an activity to learn about forces associated with skyscrapers. They design and build a model of a skyscraper from basic household materials, then test their...

Plan a panel on public policy. On the first day of lessons, scholars identify local government planners and create questions to ask regarding renewable energy and infrastructure. On the second day, they conduct the panel and learn about...

Students explore the different parts of the Cassini spacecraft. For this space science lesson, students create a model of the spacecraft using food products. They compare and contrast their model with the real one and evaluate its...

A fun and challenging activity for nearly any age group, partners must work together to build the tallest structure possible using paper clips, straws, and pipe cleaners. In addition to being tall, the structure must also be able to...

Students build their own newspaper skyscrapers with limited materials and time. They identify several different structural engineering principles relating to skyscrapers. They explain how their towers resisted the wind load.

Students design and construct a tower out of newspaper using a limited supply of newspaper, tape, and scissors. After completing their designs, they identify which designs can withstand the self-weight of the newspaper tower as well as...

Students debate which power was responsible for the outbreak of World War I. In this cause and effects lesson, students research the causes of the outbreak of World War I on ProQuest in preparation for a (limited) reenactment of the...

See how changes in initial populations and parameters affect a biological community. Individuals use a special software program to simulate a desert community with five species. They adjust initial populations to see how the community...

Students examine Boolean operators, truncation, exact phrase searching to retrieve information from search engines. They discover how using limits enhances their searches.

High schoolers use GIS to calculate park impervious cover in Austin, TX. They consider that there are different types of impervious cover from hard, packed dirt to cement paving. Students consider the limitations of data in several areas...

Fifth graders use scientific skills and processes to recognize how living things depend on one another and on the environment for survival and that the human use of natural resources impacts the environment. They research how Earth's...

The classic egg-drop experiment gets a new bounce with an activity that asks pairs to design a lander similar to one used to land a rover on Mars within a fixed budget. The activity provides a great introduction to the idea of...

You can eat a solar cell? A unit on solar energy begins with a discussion about organic solar cells, followed by directions on how to build your own. After following the teacher's directions to build an anthocyanin...