This word problems helps students learn to build the biggest three-digit number given any three numbers between 0 and 9 to use as digits.

Using spaghetti and marshmallows, students experiment with different structures to determine which ones are able to handle the greatest amount of load. Their experiments help them to further understand the effects that compression and tension forces have with respect to the strength of structures. Spaghetti cannot hold much tension or compression; therefore, it breaks very easily. Marshmallows handle compression well, but do not hold up to tension.

Students learn about how biomedical engineers create assistive devices for persons with fine motor skill disabilities. They learn about types of forces, balanced and unbalanced forces, and the relationship between form and function, as well as the structure of the hand. They do this by designing, building and testing their own hand "gripper" prototypes that are able to grasp and lift a 200 ml cup of sand.

Students experience a simulation of echolation, using the sensory method to walk along a path while blindfolded. This relates to the issue of bycatching by fisheries, which they learned about in the associated lesson. Bycatching affects marine animals, especially dolphins, which use echolocation to identify the location of objects in the water, but have difficulty identifying nets, and thus are often caught accidentally. Students learn how echolocation works, why certain animals use it to determine the size, shape and distance of objects, and how humans can potentially take advantage of dolphins' echolocation ability when developing bycatch avoidance methods.

Students observe and discuss a vacuum cleaner model of a baghouse to better understand how this pollutant recovery method functions in cleaning industrial air pollution.

With the assistance of a few teacher demonstrations (online animation, using a radiometer and rubbing hands), students review the concept of heat transfer through convection, conduction and radiation. Then they apply an understanding of these ideas as they use wireless temperature probes to investigate the heating capacity of different materials sand and water under heat lamps (or outside in full sunshine). The experiment models how radiant energy drives convection within the atmosphere and oceans, thus producing winds and weather conditions, while giving students the hands-on opportunity to understand the value of remote-sensing capabilities designed by engineers. Students collect and record temperature data on how fast sand and water heat and cool. Then they create multi-line graphs to display and compare their data, and discuss the need for efficient and reliable engineer-designed tools like wireless sensors in real-world applications.

The purpose of this activity is to demonstrate how aircrafts have decreased the amount of time it takes to transport people and cargo. Students will compute the time it takes to travel between two cities for several modes of transportation including trucks, trains and airplanes. Students will also do some critical thinking to determine why airplanes are not always used.

This unit covers the processes of photosynthesis, extinction, biomimicry and bioremediation. In the first lesson on photosynthesis, students learn how engineers use the natural process of photosynthesis as an exemplary model of a complex yet efficient process for converting solar energy to chemical energy or distributing water throughout a system. In the next lesson on species extinction, students learn that it is happening at an alarming rate. Students discover that the destruction of habitat is the main reason many species are threatened and how engineers are trying to stop this habitat destruction. The third lesson introduces students to the idea of biomimicry or looking to nature for engineering ideas. And, in the fourth and final lesson, students learn about a specialty branch of engineering called bioremediation the use of living organisms to aid in the clean up of pollutant spills.

Students plant sunflower seeds in plastic cups, and once germinated, expose them to varying light or soil moisture conditions. They measure growth of the seedlings every few days using non-standard measurement (inch cubes). After a few weeks, they compare the growth of plants exposed to the different conditions and make bar comparative graphs, which they analyze to draw conclusions about the needs of plants.

Students examine various materials to investigate how they interact with light. They use five characteristics—translucency, transparency, opaqueness, reflectivity and refractivity—to describe how light interacts with the objects.

During a power failure, or when we go outside at night, we grab a flashlight so we can find our way. What happens inside a flashlight that makes the bulb light up? Why do we need a switch to turn on a flashlight? Have you ever noticed that for the flashlight to work you must orient the batteries a certain way as you insert them into the casing? Many people do not know that a flashlight is a simple series circuit. In this hands-on activity, students build this everyday household item and design their own operating series circuit flashlights.

In addition to the purely geometric and trigonometric aspects of the task, this problem asks students to model phenomena on the surface of the earth.

Students are introduced to circuits through a teacher demonstration using a set of Christmas lights. Then students groups build simple circuits using batteries, wires and light bulbs. They examine how electricity is conducted through a light bulb using a battery as a power source. Students also observe the differences between series and parallel circuits by building each type.

This task requires students to use the fact that on the graph of the linear function h(x)=ax+b, the y-coordinate increases by a when x increases by one. Specific values for a and b were left out intentionally to encourage students to use the above fact as opposed to computing the point of intersection, (p,q), and then computing respective function values to answer the question.

This task gives a variet of real-life contexts which could be modeled by a linear or exponential function. The key distinguishing feature between the two is whether the change by equal factors over equal intervals (exponential functions), or by a constant increase per unit interval (linear functions).

This task asks students to consider the linear and quadratic functions appearing on a coordinate plane.

This is an instructional task that gives students a chance to reason about lines of symmetry and discover that a circle has an an infinite number of lines of symmetry. Even though the concept of an infinite number of lines is fairly abstract, fourth graders can understand infinity in an informal way.

This task provides students a chance to experiment with reflections of the plane and their impact on specific types of quadrilaterals. It is both interesting and important that these types of quadrilaterals can be distinguished by their lines of symmetry.