It's a bird, it's a ... device made to mimic birds. The eighth installment of a nine-part module has pupils read various articles to learn about bird flight. They consider the implications for aeronautical engineering.

What a festive way to examine what happens to the heart in different gravitational situations! Small groups place a water-filled balloon in different locations (on a table top, in a tub of water, and held in a vertical position), drawing...

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...

Lub-dub, lub-dub. Why does the heart beat? Why does blood circulate throughout the body? Life scientists find out how important circulation is for dissolving and dispersing materials by timing how long it takes for food coloring spread...

Open with a discussion on weather and climate and then explain how tree rings can provide scientists with information about the earth's past climate. Pupils analyze graphics of simulated tree rings from various US locations for the...

Ever made solar s'mores? Or recreated the solar system using peanuts? Astronomers young and old investigate all things solar using a variety of activities. Explore how the sun works, types of light it emits, and methods of charting the...

Teach your exercise enthusiasts to read their pulse rate at the radial artery and multiply by four to calculate beats per minute. Learners perform a variety of activities, recording their heart rates after one minute of each. Though...

Eating healthy can be a challenge, especially for people with special dietary needs. After learning about standard nutritional needs for adults, learners take on the role of a dietician and work together to create a menu for one of the...

Wrap up the unit in one final design. Pairs use their knowledge of aviation to design new flying machines and record how their designs take into consideration the forces that act upon airplanes. The pupils determine whether their designs...

Stop and drop what is in your hand! Pupils investigate how form effects drag in the 12th part of a 22-part unit on aviation. Groups create equally weighted objects and determine which one falls the fastest by collecting data.

It's the law—every action requires a reaction, no matter how small. Pupils experience two demonstrations of Newton's third law of motion as it relates to thrust in the 10th segment of a 22-part unit on flight. Using their mathematical...

After reading a brief history of Carl Skalak's journey on the open waters, scholars make a three-dimensional model of the Earth out of an Origami balloon using a printable decorated as the Earth.

Experience collecting rock samples using a robotic arm with an activity that has pairs work together to operate a robotic arm. One pupil serves as the eyes and the other operates the controller. The objective is to be the fastest pair to...

Building an accelerometer app for your Android device. Groups develop an app that uses the accelerometer on an Android device. The purpose of the activity is to reinforce the programming design. The post activity assessment challenges...

You can actually make objects come together by blowing air between them. This is a simple way of implementing Bernoulli's principle. Find out how wind changes air pressure to bring to objects together in this easy and fun science fair...

In this science fair project, the student will make a wind tunnel to test how the formation of birds in flight affects flight efficiency. Make the bird models out of Legos and have fun with this project. The Science Buddies project ideas...

This site offers a short history of the evolution of the space program and man's quest for more revealing and detailed pictures of the earth.