Keep everything under control. The instructional activity, the 16th segment in a 22-part unit, provides a more detailed look at the parts of a plane, specifically the control surfaces. Pupils learn about the construction of the wings and...

Too much material will weigh you down. The sixth segment in a series of 22 highlights how weight affects a plane. Pupils learn that engineers take the properties of materials, including weight, when designing something. 

Clay's as good a material as any to build a boat, right? An introductory lesson sets the stage for two activities associated with buoyancy. The first involves building boats out of clay, while the second uses these boats to measure the...

Find an answer to the age-old debate of whether life exists on Mars. Groups determine criteria to help look for signs of life on Mars. The activity has the class simulate testing Martian soil samples for signs of life before drawing...

Bend it, but don't break it. Groups investigate the strength of different materials. Using a procedure in the seventh segment of a 22-part series on aviation, pupils determine how far a rod will bend. They determine the strength-to-mass...

Which modification is the best? Using the scientific method, pairs determine the effects of each control surface on the distance of a glider's flight. The activity, section 16 in a 22-part unit on aviation, allows pupils to gain a better...

Eureka! Using the clay boats made in the previous lesson, learners investigate the idea of buoyancy and water displacement to finish the last installment of five in a Floaters and Sinkers unit. Their observations during the activity...

Clay itself sinks, but clay boats float. Why? Young engineers build clay boats to learn about buoyancy. They test the weight the boats can hold using washers and then tweak their designs to make improvements, following the engineering...

Help your class understand the design challenges when trying to land a remote spacecraft on a planet. Class members examine the provided information to understand how each component of a spacecraft is designed in order to safely land a...

Reduce the pressure in the classroom. The second instructional activity in an Airplanes unit of 22 introduces the class to Bernoulli's Principle. Pupils demonstrate the principle by blowing between different objects causing a reduction...

Stretch your teaching repertoire with an experiment on the elongation (stretching) and failure (break) of several materials. The point of the experiment is to design a composite material for chair webbing.

Whatever floats your boat. Young engineers learn about density by measuring the masses and volumes of boxes filled with different materials. Using their knowledge of densities, they hypothesize whether objects with given densities will...

Teams must determine the size of cavern needed to house the citizens of Alabraska to protect them from the asteroid impact. Using scaling properties, teams first determining the number of people that could sleep in a classroom and then...

How important is aviation? Using the background information, teachers provide the class with a brief history of aviation. The class discusses how airplanes are important to the area of transportation in the 17th installment of a...

Do not let friction drag you down! The 11th segment in a series of 22 focuses on the fourth force acting upon an airplane—drag. Pupils learn about the effects and causes of drag.

Get the class up and going with a lesson that discusses how airplane wings provide lift. Pupils use their knowledge of Bernoulli's Principle to develop an explanation of how it creates lift on airplane wings.

Force the plane through the air. The lesson introduces the force on an airplane that makes it go forward. Pupils learn how Newton's laws of motion apply to flight in the eighth segment of a 22-part unit on flight.

Students recognize that compression and tension forces are important considerations in building structures. They construct their own building structure using marshmellows and spaghetti to see which structure can hold the most weight.

Let's go fly a kite ... oops, a paper airplane! The 13th segment in an aviation unit of 22 relates the parts of an airplane to paper airplanes. Pupils learn the functions of the control surfaces of a plane to really make their knowledge...

Investigate what is pushing on us. An intriguing activity has pupils calculate the amount of force on various squares due to air pressure. Using the data, individuals create a graph in the third activity of the Up, Up and Away unit...

Change one variable and try again. Teams build basic balsa gliders and collect data on their flight distances and times. Through collaboration, the team decides on two modifications to make to the basic design and collect data for 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...

The good thing about building this rover is you get to eat it afterwards. Pairs determine rover parts they want to include in their design based upon their cost and usefulness. The teams design their rovers, build them from edible...

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...