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Design Your Own Rube Goldberg Machine
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Engineer and cartoonist Rube Goldberg is famous for his crazy machines that accomplish everyday tasks in overly complicated ways.

Oil Spill Cleanup
This hands-on experiment will provide learners with an understanding of the issues that surround environmental cleanup.

Breaking Beams
Learners investigate stress and strain by designing, building, and testing beams made from polymer clay.

Hot Cans and Cold Cans
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Learners apply their knowledge of heat transfer to design two cans - one that will retain heat and one that will cool down quickly.

Spaghetti Bridge
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Learners explore the field of civil engineering by making a bridge using spaghetti as their primary building material.

Gumdrop Dome
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In this activity (located on pages 23-24 of the PDF), learners are introduced to structural engineering and encouraged to practice goal-oriented building.

Vectoring: Steering a Plane
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In this two part activity, learners work in pairs or individually to discover how vectoring the thrust from a jet engine affects movement of an airplane.

Spaghetti Bridge
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Play with your food while learning about engineering! Build a spaghetti bridge, then test its strength by piling on the marshmallows, raw spaghetti, raw linguine and coins.

Exploring the Solar System: Mars Rovers
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In "Exploring the Solar System: Mars Rovers," participants learn about how scientists and engineers use robotic rovers and other vehicles to explore distant worlds, and experience some of the challeng

Chain Reaction II
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In this hands-on activity, learners use an assortment of (mainly household) items to complete Rube Goldberg-type challenges.

Spaghetti Strength
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In this activity on page 7 of the PDF, learners explore how engineers characterize building materials.

Make Pooter
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In this activity, learners will explore engineering to construct an insect collecting tool (insect aspirator). The pooter uses suction to safely collect smaller insects that nets miss or may injure.

For Your Eyes Only
Learners build particulate matter collectors--devices that collect samples of visible particulates present in polluted air.

Swing in Time
Learners build and investigate pendulums of different lengths. They discover that the longer the string of the pendulum, the longer the time it takes to swing.

How Do Things Fall?
Learners engage in close observation of falling objects. They determine it is the amount of air resistance, not the weight of an object, which determines how quickly an object falls.

What Color is Your Air Today?
Learners develop awareness and understanding of the daily air quality using the Air Quality Index (AQI) listed in the newspaper or online.

I Can't Take the Pressure!
Learners develop an understanding of air pressure in two different activities.

Straws and Pins
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In this activity, learners build bridges and cantilevers in a series of "building out" challenges with straws and pins.

Roller Coasters
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In this design challenge, learners will create their own roller coaster using household objects for the track and a marble or small ball as their cart.

Build a Bridge
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In this activity, learners use design thinking to design and build their own bridge out of household materials including adhesives and/or connectors.