Resource Type: Units

  • A Study of Alternative Fuels

    A Study of Alternative Fuels

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  • Experimenting with Solar Heaters

    Experimenting with Solar Heaters

    An engineering design challenge that has students first building and taking measurements from a predesigned solar water heater, then moving into designing their own solar water heater to beat the performance of the pre-designed one – 3 lessons.

  • Solar Car Engineering Challenge

    Solar Car Engineering Challenge

    In this activity students demonstrate the ability to evaluate competing solutions to the problem of increasing the heat energy transferred to a vial of water.

  • When and Why Do We Build Dams?

    When and Why Do We Build Dams?

    Students will demonstrate basic understanding of electricity generation and basic components of a hydroelectric dam. They will research, design and test turbines for hydroelectric generation. Students will research and defend(opinion stance) various people groups and social justice factors(tribal rights, salmon protection & energy access) connected with water storage, flood/irrigation support and electricity production/distribution.

  • Renewable City

    Renewable City

    This Renewable City Unit aims to help students dive in and actively explore sustainability, renewable resources, and how they might personally help solve our climate change problem. As students use multiple methods for investigating, creating, and thinking about these critical issues, they will be encouraged to develop pliable minds and action-oriented skills to address climate…

  • Understanding Energy Through Wind Turbines

    Understanding Energy Through Wind Turbines

    In this unit students will be building knowledge on what energy is and how it is harnessed, students will interact with a variety of energy stations to build an understanding on what energy is. From there students will learn about renewable energy and the difference between renewable and non-renewable energy. Students will learn how to…

  • Understanding Science and Engineering Through Solar Power

    Understanding Science and Engineering Through Solar Power

    Students learn about electricity from solar power through building simple circuits, exploring how solar calculators get their electricity, and from designing and testing a solar water pump.

  • Future Needs of the PNW Hydropower System

    Future Needs of the PNW Hydropower System

    Students will evaluate the arguments for breaching the snake river dams, and the arguments against the breach. They will assess cost/benefit assessments, stakeholder positions, and possible solutions.

  • Electrical Engineering: Why Does the Electrical System Break Down?

    Electrical Engineering: Why Does the Electrical System Break Down?

    This unit, developed through the Ambitious Science Teaching framework, attempts to create cohesive, model-based learning experience for high school level physics students to explore these concepts through the anchoring event of a power outages. They will explore our electrical system from simple circuits and the function of a switch, tracing the electrical energy back through…

  • Clean Water Power: Wind, Waves, and Moving Water

    Clean Water Power: Wind, Waves, and Moving Water

    This unit strives to answer the question: “How can the power of moving help communities by generating electricity?” Through a variety of lessons centered on the phenomena of the power of moving water, students will develop skills in circuits, model building, and testing. Students will explore issues surrounding clean water, energy, and careers.

  • Solar Boats

    Solar Boats

    Students are led through a comprehensive unit leading them from the basics of energy through to a culminating solar boat engineering design project (9 lessons).

  • Adrift in a Sea of Plastic

    Adrift in a Sea of Plastic

    Students will explore the phenomenon of plastic garbage islands and develop engineering solutions to address the problem. Students will use 3-D modeling and 3-d pens and printers to create their model solutions, and conduct research on the problem and present on the problem and their solution (4 lessons).

  • Solar Updraft Towers

    Solar Updraft Towers

    Students will combine research, direct observations, and hands on investigation to lead them into an engineering design project involving the construction of a solar updraft tower (5 lessons).

  • Robotic Sunflower

    Robotic Sunflower

    Students will build electronics and programming knowledge to build a robotic sunflower which tracks the sun. Students will utilize multimeter readings, understanding resistors and circuits to program the multi-axis movement with Basic Stamp.

  • Wave Attenuator

    Wave Attenuator

    Students will experiment with the basic concepts of motion to electrical energy transformation. Students start by building a series of models that demonstrate the interactions between magnetic and electric fields. Students then apply this background knowledge to design and optimize a solution for wave energy conversion using a wave attenuator (3 lessons).

  • Home Energy Consumption

    Home Energy Consumption

    Students will calculate the energy consumption of a set of common household devices based on their operating power rating and then investigate the power consumption of other devices in their homes.

  • Solar Mobile Design Challenge

    Solar Mobile Design Challenge

    This unit involves students learning about transferring solar energy to small motors, exploring the center of gravity and testing light sources (including the sun). The culminating engineering design project gives students the chance to pull together their new learning in order to design a tabletop solar powered mobile (5 lessons).

  • Simple Solar Tracker Activity

    Simple Solar Tracker Activity

    Students will be shown a working example of a solar tracker and asked to replicate the design based on their observations (1-2 lessons).

  • Solar Sphero SPRK+

    Solar Sphero SPRK+

    This unit incorporates basic programming knowledge and solar energy into an engineering design challenge using Sphero SPRK+ robots. The theme for this challenge centers on the idea of Mars rovers, and the challenges faced in space exploration, specifically remote control of exploration tools and the energy generation needed to power these devices (6 lessons).

  • Chemical Differences in Emergency Energy Sources

    Chemical Differences in Emergency Energy Sources

    In the context of preparing a disaster supply kit, students develop atomic and molecular models of energy resources, analyze combustion of various fuels and build circuits. They then research and evaluate the impacts of converting natural resources into PV cells. Finally, students engineer a hand warmer that uses an exothermic chemical reaction (5 lessons).

  • Waste to Power

    Waste to Power

    This unit guides students through exploring how humans harness the natural environment to create clean power from anaerobic digestion and its role in clean energy production. Additionally, they will explore solutions that benefit the environment, their communities, and all humanity.

  • Methane to Music

    Methane to Music

    Students explore the phenomena of a Ruben’s Tube powered by renewable gas to understand how humans impact the flow of carbon in earth’s atmosphere. The lessons include topics of decomposers in a food web, compost, municipal waste, the and the carbon cycle.

  • Solar Battery Charging

    Solar Battery Charging

    Students will become familiar with circuits, cells, batteries, and photovoltaic cells, then plan, build, test, modify, and re-test a small solar battery charger designed to maintain batteries from a particular device.

  • Off the Grid: Energy Transformations and Efficiency

    Off the Grid: Energy Transformations and Efficiency

    Students are led through the basics of complex circuit building, including the use of buck and boost converters, converting AC to DC and back, with the ultimate goal of designing and building a solar cell phone charger. Involves learning circuit diagramming and calculating efficiencies of various circuits and comparing based upon measurements (7 lessons).

  • Illuminate Me: Merging Conductive Sewing, Technology, and Solar Power

    Illuminate Me: Merging Conductive Sewing, Technology, and Solar Power

    Students will design and build a wearable circuit using a microcontroller and incorporating solar power into a wearable garment project by recharging NiMH batteries for a renewable energy battery pack. This lesson is great for a culminating project since it integrates three major components: sewing circuits with conductive thread, programmable hardware, and energy transformations using…

  • Designing a Sustainable City of the Future

    Designing a Sustainable City of the Future

    The concept for this unit is to teach students about natural resources and renewable energy in the context of how these things impact people, communities, and the environment. They will study the actions of current and past environmental activists, learn to look critically at current energy systems, and possible solutions. The final outcome of the…

  • Bioreactor Water Heating

    Bioreactor Water Heating

    Students are guided through the concepts of solar and biomass heating as well as water pumping to design a water pumping system that uses multiple technologies to avoid water freezing in winter.

  • Understanding E-Waste Through Battery Design

    Understanding E-Waste Through Battery Design

    In this unit of multi-day lessons, students will further their understanding of energy, electricity, and basic circuits by focusing on batteries and e-waste. Students will build on their existing knowledge of energy, exploring how it is stored and used in everyday life, as well as the role of batteries in energy systems. Hands-on experiments with…

  • Solar vs Wind Energy Unit

    Solar vs Wind Energy Unit

    Students learn the fundamentals of energy transformation and vocabulary, electrical circuits, explore energy usage in their homes. Students then explore energy generation, including the use of magnetism and renewable energy sources.

  • Keeping it Cool with Solar Unit

    Keeping it Cool with Solar Unit

    Students will learn about cool and warm temperatures and apply their understanding to build a playground structure that keeps us cool on a hot day. Students are introduced to the engineering design process as they modify their designs.