Search Results
Showing results 1 to 20 of 25

Design Your Own Rube Goldberg Machine
Source Institutions
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.

Trash Talkin'
In this activity, learners collect, categorize, weigh and analyze classroom trash and discuss ways that engineers have helped to reduce solid waste.

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

Pinball Wizard
Source Institutions
In this hands-on engineering project, kids use two simple machines, levers and inclined planes, to construct their own pinball machines.

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

Gumdrop Dome
Source Institutions
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
Source Institutions
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.

Designing a Wall
Source Institutions
In this engineering activity (page 5 of PDF), young learners investigate how materials and design contribute to the strength of a structure, particularly walls.

Spaghetti Bridge
Source Institutions
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.

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

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

Roller Coasters
Source Institutions
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
Source Institutions
In this activity, learners use design thinking to design and build their own bridge out of household materials including adhesives and/or connectors.

Zipline
Source Institutions
In this design activity, learners create a vehicle that can transport a load, like a favorite toy or as a recycled object, from the top of a zipline to the bottom using only gravity.