Students learn about water poverty and how water engineers can develop appropriate solutions to a problem that is plaguing nearly a sixth of the world's population. Students follow the engineering design process to design a gravity-fed water system. They choose between different system parameters such as pipe sizes, elevation differentials between entry and exit pipes, pipe lengths and tube locations to find a design that provides the maximum flow and minimum water turbidity (cloudiness) at the point of use. In this activity, students play the role of water engineers by designing and building model gravity-fed water systems, learning the key elements necessary for viable projects that help improve the lives people in developing communities.

In this activity, students will use cookies to simulate the distribution of our nonrenewable resources (energy). Then, they will discuss how the world's growing population affects the fairness and effectiveness of this distribution of these resources and how engineers work to develop technologies to support the population.

Students use water balloons and a length of string to understand how the force of gravity between two objects and the velocity of a spacecraft can balance to form an orbit. They see that when the velocity becomes too great for gravity to hold the spacecraft in orbit, the object escapes the orbit and travels further away from the planet.

Students learn basic marketing concepts and use professional marketing techniques to compose an advertisement for a hybrid vehicle. In the process, they learn the principles of comparative analysis.

Students form expert engineering teams working for the (fictional) alternative energy consulting firm, Greenewables, Inc. Each team specializes in a form of renewable energy used to generate electrical power: passive solar, solar photovoltaic, wind power, low-impact hydropower, biomass, geothermal and (for more advanced students) hydrogen fuel cells. Teams produce poster presentations making a case for their technology and produce an accompanying PDF document using Adobe Acrobat that summarizes the presentation. This activity is geared towards fifth-grade and older students, and Internet research capabilities are required. Some portions of this activity may be appropriate with younger students.

The class forms a "Presidential Task Force" for a week, empowered by the president to find answers and make recommendations concerning the future of the national power grid. Task force members conduct daily debriefings with their research team and prepare a report and presentation of their findings for the president, using an actual policy document as a guide. Although this activity is geared towards fifth-grade and older students and Internet research capabilities are required, some portions may be appropriate for younger students.

Student teams locate a contaminant spill in a hypothetical site by measuring the pH of soil samples. Then they predict the direction of groundwater flow using mathematical modeling. They also use the engineering design process to come up with alternative treatments for the contaminated water.

This task adds some rigor to the activity of growing bean plants. By collecting growth data, students practice measuring and recording length measurements.

This task is designed to make students think about the meaning of the quantities presented in the context and choose which ones are appropriate for the two different constraints presented. In particular, note that the purpose of the task is to have students generate the constraint equations for each part (though the problem statements avoid using this particular terminology), and not to have students solve said equations.

Students visit second- and fourth-grade classes to measure the heights of older students using large building blocks as a non-standard unit of measure. They also measure adults in the school community. Results are displayed in age-appropriate bar graphs (paper cut-outs of miniature building blocks glued on paper to form bar graphs) enabling a comparison of the heights of different age groups. The activities that comprise this activity help students develop the concepts and vocabulary to describe, in a non-ambiguous way, how heights change as children age. This introduction to graphing provides an important foundation for creating and interpreting graphs in future years.

This problem asks the students to represent a sequence of operations using an expression and then to write and solve simple equations. The problem is posed as a game and allows the students to visualize mathematical operations. It would make sense to actually play a similar game in pairs first and then ask the students to record the operations to figure out each other's numbers.

This marbel counting iteration of greater than, less than, and equal to with a specific "target number" help strengthen the concept for students.

Sometimes it's our own kids, and other times it's other people's kids that send us into the restroom crying. Either way it's no fun and can begin to weigh us down to a slow drudge on our morning commute into work. Take a minute to absorb this free eBook and "Stop Crying in the Restroom [it ain't that deep]."

Students use gumdrops and toothpicks to make lithium atom models. Using these models, they investigate the makeup of atoms, including their relative size. Students are then asked to form molecules out of atoms, much in the same way they constructed atoms out of the particles that atoms are made of. Students also practice adding and subtracting electrons from an atom and determining the overall charges on atoms.

This problem could be used as an introductory lesson to introduce group comparisons and to engage students in a question they may find amusing and interesting. More generally, the idea of the lesson could be used as a template for a project where students develop a questionnaire, sample students at their school and report on their findings.

This task involves fraction multiplication that can be solved with pictures or number lines.

In this activity students measure their hand span. A line graph is used to record the data from the glass.

In this group task students collect data and investigate whether there is a relationship between height and hand size among the students in the class.

Students learn about weight by building a spring scale and observing how it responds to objects with different masses.