Naturally Disastrous
Students are introduced to natural disasters, and learn the difference between natural hazards and natural disasters. They discover the many types of natural hazards — avalanche, earthquake, flood, forest fire, hurricane, landslide, thunderstorm, tornado, tsunami and volcano — as well as specific examples of natural disasters. Students also explore why understanding these natural events is important to engineers and everyone’s survival on our planet.
Building a Fancy Spectrograph
Students create and decorate their own spectrographs using simple materials and holographic diffraction gratings. A holographic diffraction grating acts like a prism, showing the visual components of light. After building the spectrographs, students observe the spectra of different light sources as homework.
My Mechanical Ear Can Hear!
Students are introduced to various types of hearing impairments and the types of biomedical devices that engineers have designed to aid people with this physical disability.
Engineers Speak for the Trees
Students begin by reading Dr. Seuss’ "The Lorax" as an example of how overdevelopment can cause long-lasting environmental destruction. Students discuss how to balance the needs of the environment with the needs of human industry. Student teams are asked to serve as natural resource engineers, city planning engineers and civil engineers with the task to replant the nearly destroyed forest and develop a sustainable community design that can co-exist with the re-established natural area.
Audio Engineers: Sound Weavers
Students are introduced to audio engineers, discovering the type of environment in which they work and exactly what they do on a day-to-day basis. Students come to realize that audio engineers help produce their favorite music and movies.
Don’t Confuse Your Qs!
Students investigate the difference between qualitative and quantitative measurements and observations. By describing objects both qualitatively and quantitatively, students learn that both types of information are required for complete descriptions. Students discuss various the characteristics of many objects, demonstrating how engineers use both qualitative and quantitative information in product design.
Soil Investigations
Students learn the basics about soil, including its formation, characteristics and importance. They are also introduced to soil profiles and how engineers conduct site investigations to learn about soil quality for development, contamination transport, and assessing the general environmental health of an area.
Strength of Materials
Students learn about the variety of materials used by engineers in the design and construction of modern bridges. They also find out about the material properties important to bridge construction and consider the advantages and disadvantages of steel and concrete as common bridge-building materials to handle compressive and tensile forces.
Water, Water Everywhere
Students learn about floods, discovering that different types of floods occur from different water sources, but primarily from heavy rainfall. While floods occur naturally and have benefits such as creating fertile farmland, students learn that with the increase in human population in flood-prone areas, floods are become increasingly problematic. Both natural and manmade factors contribute to floods. Students learn what makes floods dangerous and what engineers design to predict, control and sur
How to be a Great Navigator!
In this lesson, students will learn how great navigators of the past stayed on course — that is, the historical methods of navigation. The concepts of dead reckoning and celestial navigation are discussed.
All Caught Up: Bycatching and Design
Bycatch, the unintended capture of animals in commercial fishing gear, is one of the hottest topics in marine conservation today. About 25% of the entire global catch is bycatch. This surprisingly high level of bycatch is responsible for the decline of hundreds of thousands of dolphins, whales, porpoises, seabirds and sea turtles each year. Through this curricular unit, students will analyze the significance of bycatch in the global ecosystem and propose solutions to help reduce bycatch. Student
Energetic Musical Instruments
Students will learn to apply the principles and concepts associated with energy and the transfer of energy in an engineering context through the designing and making of a musical instrument. The students must choose from a variety of supplies presented to them to make an instrument capable of producing three different tones. After the accomplishment of the design, students must explain the energy transfer mechanism in sufficient detail and describe how they could make their instruments better.
You’re a Pushover!
The purpose of this activity is to demonstrate Newton’s 3rd Law of Motion, which is the physical law that governs thrust in aircraft. The students will do several activities that show that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
Leaning Tower of Pasta
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.
Master's student CuiCui Chen examines the future role of biofuels
Researchers from the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change describe their research and why it is important
Master's student Paul Kishimoto makes complex climate and economic models user-friendly
Researchers from the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change describe their research and why it is important
Part 3, "Behave!" Censoring Game Sex
Part 3,""Behave!" Censoring Game Sex" Depictions of sex have a long history of being controversial in any medium, and here we are going to take a look at, discuss, and even****play** some examples from
the history of video games. How has this evolving medium depicted the sex act, both
visually and interactively, and how has this been shaped by the rise of game rating
systems, both in the U.S. and in other parts of the world? Why do some people find these
games even more objectionable th
Part 2, "Behave!" Censoring Game Sex
Part 2,""Behave!" Censoring Game Sex" Depictions of sex have a long history of being controversial in any medium, and here we are going to take a look at, discuss, and even****play** some examples from
the history of video games. How has this evolving medium depicted the sex act, both
visually and interactively, and how has this been shaped by the rise of game rating
systems, both in the U.S. and in other parts of the world? Why do some people find these
games even more objectionable th
EVER '11: Pneu Scooter and RazEr rEVolution
Pneu Scooter and RazEr rEVolution cruising outside of the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco for the EVER '11 Conference and Exhibition on Ecological Vehicles and Renewable Energies. These are electric kick scooters with custom-built rear wheel hub motors.
More info:
scolton.blogspot.com
www.etotheipiplusone.net
Part 1, "Behave!" Censoring Game Sex
Part 1,""Behave!" Censoring Game Sex" Depictions of sex have a long history of being controversial in any medium, and here we are going to take a look at, discuss, and even****play** some examples from
the history of video games. How has this evolving medium depicted the sex act, both
visually and interactively, and how has this been shaped by the rise of game rating
systems, both in the U.S. and in other parts of the world? Why do some people find these
games even more objectionable th
