This investigation allows students to explore the real-life meaning of solar energy. Students designing and engineering a solar oven using a pizza box. Completed projects will be tested and then evaluated for effectiveness.
This lesson results from a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and ASTA.
In this lesson, students will investigate materials to determine which materials would be best to harness the power of the wind. Students will design, construct, and race a puff mobile. Students will create a class chart to record data from the puff mobile race. Students will compare features from the puff mobiles with the best race times.
The students will make a drawing that lights up, while investigating circuits using copper tape, batteries and LEDs. They will use templates for the first circuit and then explore by adding more LEDs and copper tape traces.
In this lesson, students will investigate the design behind William Kamkwamba's windmill. Using his design ideas, students will design, construct, and test their own windmill.
Engage students in testing their knowledge of circuits in this delightful dissection. Students will apply science practices and content knowledge while conducting hands-on and digital/print research and writing. The actual "dissection" does not take very long, but the writing components can be extended if desired.
Electricity is a form of power that is produced by the movement of electrons. When the flow of electrons is constant, it produces an electric current.
The classroom resource provides a slide show that will describe electricity and how it works. This resource can provide background information for students before they carry out their own investigations. There is also a short test that can be used to assess students' understanding.
Electricity is a form of power that is produced by the movement of electrons. Static electricity and lightning are natural forms of electricity, and they occur when electrons jump from one object to another.
The classroom resource provides a video that will introduce students to the different types of electricity. This resource can provide background information for students before they conduct their own investigations. There is also a short test that can be used to assess students' understanding.
You can think of energy as the ability to move or cause change in matter. It comes in many forms. Kinetic energy is energy that is in use, and potential energy is energy that is stored for later.
The classroom resource provides a video that will explain the different forms of energy. This resource can provide background information for students before they conduct their own investigations and/or create their own models. There is also a short test that can be used to assess students' understanding.
In this interactive, students will play the role of a lighting designer to understand that the lighting designer creates stage lighting for performances and that one needs to understand how the electrical components are connected. This animated interactive job exploration experience connects schoolwork with real work and familiarizes students with skills needed to become a lighting designer for the theater.
When you flip a light switch on and off, you are closing and opening a circuit. A circuit is a path that electricity follows. This interactive helps students learn more about circuits.
For hundreds of years, people have harnessed moving air (wind) to do work. The earliest forms of wind-powered machines were sailboats. Wind pushing against the sails of a boat provided the energy to move the boat across the water, saving people the trouble of rowing. Later, people discovered that if they attached sail-like panels to a wheel at the top of a stationary tower, wind blowing against the panels would cause the wheel and the central shaft to which it was attached to turn. The shaft drove mechanisms inside the tower that were used to mill, or grind, grain into flour. These wind-driven mills were called, simply, windmills. And even though wind-driven machines are now also used to pump water from wells and to generate electricity, the name windmill has stuck.
In this activity, students review the engineering design process and discuss how wind can be used to help get work done. They look at a variety of windmills, focusing on the different materials used in the construction of windmills and the type of work each windmill is designed to do. Finally, they use simple materials to build their own windmills to do work.
In this activity, students experiment with batteries, wires, bulbs, and switches to assemble series and parallel circuits and to test for conductivity in sample items.
This Robots 3D Activity Guide includes instructions on how to compile materials to create your own robotics kit. It uses hands-on activities that we use every day and easily found items. Customize your kit to fit particular grades, education standards, or topics, such as electricity and circuits; actuators, mobility and sensors; simple machines and gears; programming and operation; and real-world application.