Engineering
Middle School Engineering I, II and III
Students in this course use critical thinking skills, mathematical and scientific concepts, materials and tools to solve real-world problems while working in teams.
Motivated by practical goals and challenged by a teamwork setting, they will explore and apply the relevant skills, concepts, and hands-on construction techniques to arrive at workable solutions.
A typical unit will consist of two phases: development and deployment. In the development phase, the teacher will lead students through an exploration of the concepts and skills needed to develop their own solutions. In the deployment phase, students will demonstrate their understanding of concepts and skills through designing, constructing, testing, revising and presenting their solutions.
Additional resources for understanding the CSS-MSE Engineering curriculum.
Examples of 6th Grade Engineering Projects
The Egg Drop - Apply the physics of falling objects to develop a vessel to project an egg from a six story drop.
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Marshmallow Catapult - Apply the principles of levers and computer assisted design to build a device that can launch a marshmallow as far as possible at the least cost.
Cardboard Chair - Build a chair using only cardboard (no adhesives) that can support your advisor. Students apply structural design principles, learn precise crafsmanship, and apply scaling to take miniature prototypes to full-size.
Electric Car - Develop a conceptual model that explains the behavior of charge in simple circuits. Build your own switches, wires, electric motor, and lightbulb sockets. Tie it all together in the design of a battery-powered, remote (wire) controlled car that has at least three separately switched components.
Green School Redesign - Research green design principles such as carbon footprint analysis, lifecycle analysis, energy efficiency, and biomimicry. Develop accurate blueprints of a space in the school and peform a green redesign using computer-aided design tools.
Examples of 7th Grade Engineering Projects
The Truss Bridge - Explore the physics of stress, strain, and material strengths. Take a tour through the history of bridge designs. Build a miniature truss bridge that gives the greatest strength for the least cost. Use computer simulators to test your design before building, then use a stress frame to measure the load on the bridge when it fails!
DYO Musical Instrument - Explore the physics of sound and the design principles used to produce musical instruments. Build your own instrument capable of producing a simple song.
The Hydraulic Arm - Simple machines are everywhere, even in your body. Explore the physics of levers and hydraulic systems to understand what they have in common, and how they can be combined into a compound machine.
Examples of 8th Grade Engineering Projects
Engineering III - Course description
Eighth grade engineering will drawn upon the cooperative, experimental, and project skills learned and utilized in the previous grades in a more mature and calculated manner. Students will learn concepts and skills from mathematics, science, and industrial arts and apply them in design, production, and reporting of an objective. Students will learn the importance of accuracy in both creating and following designs that apply newly learned skills and previously mastered ideas.
Life Boat - Build a simple cube to high standards of craftsmanship and explore the principles of buoyancy to predict the number of quarters it can hold without sinking.
Water Rocket - Explore the physics of force, pressure, and the compressibility of gases to design a water rocket the goes the highest.
more to come....
