n addition to providing a task that relates to other disciplines (history, civics, current events, etc.), this task is intended to demonstrate that a graph can summarize a distribution as well as provide useful information about specific observations.

The grand challenge for this legacy cycle unit is for students to design a way to help a recycler separate aluminum from steel scrap metal. In previous lessons, they have looked at how magnetism might be utilized. In this lesson, students think about how they might use magnets and how they might confront the problem of turning the magnetic field off. Through the accompanying activity students explore the nature of an electrically induced magnetic field and its applicability to the needed magnet.

Students are presented with a hypothetical scenario that delivers the unit's Grand Challenge Question: To apply an understanding of nanoparticles to treat, detect and protect against skin cancer. Towards finding a solution, they begin the research phase by investigating the first research question: What is electromagnetic energy? Students learn about the electromagnetic spectrum, ultraviolet radiation (including UVA, UVB and UVC rays), photon energy, the relationship between wave frequency and energy (c = λν), as well as about the Earth's ozone-layer protection and that nanoparticles are being used for medical applications. The lecture material also includes information on photo energy and the dual particle/wave model of light. Students complete a problem set to calculate frequency and energy.

In this activity, the students will complete the grand challenge and design an electromagnet to separate steel from aluminum for the recycler. In order to do this, students compare the induced magnetic field of an electric current with the magnetic field of a permanent magnet and must make the former look like the latter. They discover that looping the current produces the desired effect and find ways to further strengthen the magnetic field.

Emily Hanford discusses the broken education system and what the problem is. She also discusses what is being done to fix it. This is a link to her three-part documentary and what opened the door to the science of reading movement.

One of the greatest frustrations mentioned by many teachers is that their students are often not motivated to learn. Teachers quickly come to recognize the warning signs of poor motivation in their classroom: students put little effort into homework and classwork assignments, slump in their seats and fail to participate in class discussion, or even become confrontational toward the teacher when asked about an overdue assignment. One common method for building motivation is to tie student academic performance and classroom participation to specific rewards or privileges. Critics of reward systems note, however, that they can be expensive and cumbersome to administer and may lead the student to engage in academics only when there is an outside 'payoff.' While there is no magic formula for motivating students, the creative teacher can sometimes encourage student investment in learning in ways that do not require use of formal reward systems.

In this activity, students are divided into a group of hormones and a group of receptors. The hormones have to find their matching receptors, and the pair, once matched, perform a given action. This activity helps students learn about the specificity of hormone-receptor interactions within the endocrine system.

Students learn to apply the principles and concepts associated with energy and the transfer of energy in an engineering context by designing and making musical instruments. They choose from a variety of provided supplies to make instruments capable of producing three different tones. After completing their designs, students explain the energy transfer mechanism in detail and describe how they could make their instruments better.

Students search for clues of energy around them. They use what they find to create their own definition of energy. They also relate their energy clues to the engineering products they encounter every day.

This Lesson provides two different activities that require students to measure energy outputs and inputs to determine the efficiency of conversions and simple systems. One of the activities includes Lego motors and accomplishing work. The other investigates energy for heating water. They learn about by products of energy conversions and how to improve upon efficiency. The teacher can choose to use either of these or both of these. The calculations in the water heating experiment are more complicated than in the Lego motor activity. Thus, the heating activity is suitable for older students, only the Lego motor activity suitable for younger students.

We all know that it takes energy to provide us with the basics of shelter: heating, cooling, lighting, electricity, sanitation and cooking. To create energy-efficient housing that is practical for people to use every day requires combining many smaller systems that each perform a function well, and making smart decisions about the sources of power we use. Through five lessons on the topics of heat transfer, circuits, daylighting, electricity from renewable energy sources, and passive solar design, students learn about the science, math and engineering that go into designing energy-efficient components of smart housing that is environmentally friendly. Through numerous design/build/analyze activities, students create a solar water heater, swamp cooler, thermostat, model houses for testing, model greenhouse, and wind and water turbine prototypes. It is best if students are concurrently taking Algebra 1 in order to complete some of the worksheets.

In an active way, students discover a few critical facts about how we use energy and how much energy we use. Each student has a "clue," some of which are pertinent energy facts and others are silly statements that are clearly unrelated to the topic. Students mingle and ask each other for clues until they have collected all the facts they need. This provides a more interactive way to communicate energy statistics, compared to a lecture and introduction with board work. The goal is to introduce students to some key terms and issues associated with energy as a necessary prerequisite for the remainder of the unit.

Students utilize data tables culled from the US DOE Energy Information Agency to create graphs that illustrate what types of energy we use and how we use it. An MS Excel workbook with several spreadsheets of data is provided. Students pick (or the teacher assigns) one of the data tables from which students create plots and interpret the information provided. Student groups share with the class their interpretations and new perspectives on energy resources and use.

Students experiment with an online virtual laboratory set at a skate park. They make predictions of graphs before they use the simulation to create graphs of energy vs. time under different conditions. This simulation experimentation strengths their comprehension of conservation of energy solely between gravitational potential energy and kinetic energy

This lesson covers concepts of energy and energy transfer utilizing energy transfer in musical instruments as an example. More specifically, the lesson explains the two different ways in which energy can be transferred between a system and its environment. The law of conservation of energy will also be taught. Example systems will be presented to students (two cars on a track and a tennis ball falling to the ground) and students will be asked to make predictions and explain the energy transfer mechanisms. The engineering focus comes in clearly in the associated activity when students are asked to apply the fundamental concepts of the lesson to design a musical instrument. The systems analyzed in the lesson should help a great deal in terms of discussing how to apply conservation of energy and energy transfer to make things.

Students discover that they already know a lot about energy through their own life experiences. As active consumers of various forms of energy, they are aware of energy purchases for electricity, home heating/cooling and transportation. Through the pedagogical technique of a "carousel," all students become involved in brainstorming and contributing ideas. The goal is to introduce students to key terms and issues associated with energy, as a prerequisite for the rest of the unit.

Students are introduced to sound energy concepts and how engineers use sound energy. Through hands-on activities and demonstrations, students examine how we know sound exists by listening to and seeing sound waves. They learn to describe sound in terms of its pitch, volume and frequency. They explore how sound waves move through liquids, solids and gases. They also identify the different pitches and frequencies, and create high- and low-pitch sound waves.

Students learn about applied forces as they create pop-up-books the art of paper engineering. They also learn the basic steps of the engineering design process.

Students use simple materials to design an open spectrograph so they can calculate the angle light is bent when it passes through a holographic diffraction grating. A holographic diffraction grating acts like a prism, showing the visual components of light. After finding the desired angles, students use what they have learned to design their own spectrograph enclosure.

Students build small-sized prototypes of mountain rescue litters rescue baskets for use in hard-to-get-to places, such as mountainous terrain to evacuate an injured person (modeled by a potato) from the backcountry. Groups design their litters within constraints: they must be stable, lightweight, low-cost, portable and quick to assemble. Students demonstrate their designs in a timed test during which they assemble the litter and transport the rescued person (potato) over a set distance.