The lesson begins by introducing Olympics as the unit theme. The purpose of this lesson is to introduce students to the techniques of engineering problem solving. Specific techniques covered in the lesson include brainstorming and the engineering design process. The importance of thinking out of the box is also stressed to show that while some tasks seem impossible, they can be done. This introduction includes a discussion of the engineering required to build grand, often complex, Olympic event centers.

Students use three tracks marked on the floor, one in yards, one in feet and one in inches. As they start and stop a robot specific distances on a "runway," they can easily determine the equivalent measurements in other units by looking at the nearby tracks. With this visual and physical representation of the magnitude of the units of feet, yard and inches, students gain an understanding of what is meant by "unit conversion." They also gain a familiarity with different common units of measurement. They use multiplication and division to verify their physical estimated unit conversions. Students also learn about how common and helpful it is to convert from one unit to another in everyday situations and for engineering purposes. This activity helps students make the abstract concept of unit conversion real so they develop mental models of the magnitude of units instead of applying memorized conversion factors by rote.

This game game supports students in counting forward and can be adjusted to support backward counting.

This task acts as a bridge between understanding place value and using strategies based on place value for addition and subtraction.

In this activity, students learn about ocean currents and the difference between salt and fresh water. They use colored ice cubes to see how cold and warm water mix and how this mixing causes currents. Also, students learn how surface currents occur due to wind streams. Lastly, they learn how fresh water floats on top of salt water, the difference between water in the ocean and fresh water throughout the planet, and how engineers are involved in the design of ocean water systems for human use.

Online Statistics: An Interactive Multimedia Course of Study is an introductory-level statistics book. The material is presented both as a standard textbook and as a multimedia presentation. The book features interactive demonstrations and simulations, case studies, and an analysis lab.

The purpose of this task is to help solidify students' understanding of signed numbers as points on a number line and to understand the geometric interpretation of adding and subtracting signed numbers.

This task has students experiment with the operations of addition and multiplication, as they relate to the notions of rationality and irrationality.

In this ordering task each number has at most 3 digits so that students have the opportunity to think about how digit placement affects the size of the number.

In this task students must place 4-digit numbers into order from smallest to greatest and greatest to smallest.

The purpose of this task is to extend students' understanding of fraction comparison.

In this task students compare numbers less than 100 to benchmark numbers and learn to build an understanding of the relative magnitude of numbers.

The purpose of this task is to present students with a situation in which they need to divide a whole number by a unit fraction in order to find a solution.

This challenging problem and brainteaser gives students an opportunity to compose and decompose polygons to make rectangles.

Student groups are challenged to create food packages for specific foods. They focus on three components in the design of their food packages; the packages must keep the food clean, protect or aid in the physical and chemical changes that can take place in the food, and present the food appealingly. They design their packaging to meet these requirements.

The purpose of this task is to provide students an opportunity to use mathematics addressed in different standards in the same problem.

The purpose of this task is for students to find the answer to a question in context that can be represented by fraction multiplication. This task is appropriate for either instruction or assessment depending on how it is used and where students are in their understanding of fraction multiplication.

The purpose of this task is to provide students with a situation in which it is natural for them to divide a unit fraction by a non-zero whole number.

Vision is the primary sense of many animals and much is known about how vision is processed in the mammalian nervous system. One distinct property of the primary visual cortex is a highly organized pattern of sensitivity to location and orientation of objects in the visual field. But how did we learn this? An important tool is the ability to design experiments to map out the structure and response of a system such as vision. In this activity, students learn about the visual system and then conduct a model experiment to map the visual field response of a Panoptes robot. (In Greek mythology, Argus Panoptes was the "all-seeing" watchman giant with 100 eyes.) A simple activity modification enables a true black box experiment, in which students do not directly observe how the visual system is configured, and must match the input to the output in order to reconstruct the unseen system inside the box.

This high level task is an example of applying geometric methods to solve design problems and satisfy physical constraints. This task is accessible to all students. In this task, a typographic grid system serves as the background for a standard paper clip.