Play with a bar magnet and coils to learn about Faraday's law. …
Play with a bar magnet and coils to learn about Faraday's law. Move a bar magnet near one or two coils to make a light bulb glow. View the magnetic field lines. A meter shows the direction and magnitude of the current. View the magnetic field lines or use a meter to show the direction and magnitude of the current. You can also play with electromagnets, generators and transformers!
Using the LEGO® NXT robotics kit, students construct and program robots to …
Using the LEGO® NXT robotics kit, students construct and program robots to illustrate and explore the Fibonacci sequence. Within teams, students are assigned roles: group leader, chassis builder, arm builder, chief programmer, and Fibonacci verifier. By designing a robot that moves based on the Fibonacci sequence of numbers, they can better visualize how quickly the numbers in the sequence grow. To program the robot to move according to these numbers, students break down the sequence into simple algebraic equations so that the computer can understand the Fibonacci sequence.
In the Flow Rate Experiment, students perform hands-on experiments with a common …
In the Flow Rate Experiment, students perform hands-on experiments with a common faucet, as well as work with the Engineering Our Water Living Lab to gain a better understanding of flow rate and how it pertains to engineering and applied science. Students calculate the flow rate of a faucet for three different levels (quarter blast, half blast, and full blast). Building on these calculations, students hypothesize about the flow rate in a nearby river, and then use the Engineering Our Water Living Lab to check their hypothesis. For this lesson to be effective, your students need to have a visual feel for the flow in a nearby river.
In this class, food serves as both the subject and the object …
In this class, food serves as both the subject and the object of historical analysis. As a subject, food has been transformed over the last 100 years, largely as a result of ever more elaborate scientific and technological innovations. From a need to preserve surplus foods for leaner times grew an elaborate array of techniques -- drying, freezing, canning, salting, etc -- that changed not only what people ate, but how far they could/had to travel, the space in which they lived, their relations with neighbors and relatives, and most of all, their place in the economic order of things. The role of capitalism in supporting and extending food preservation and development was fundamental. As an object, food offers us a way into cultural, political, economic, and techno-scientific history. Long ignored by historians of science and technology, food offers a rich source for exploring, e.g., the creation and maintenance of mass-production techniques, industrial farming initiatives, the politics of consumption, vertical integration of business firms, globalization, changing race and gender identities, labor movements, and so forth. How is food different in these contexts, from other sorts of industrial goods? What does the trip from farm to table tell us about American culture and history?
Explore the forces at work when you try to push a filing …
Explore the forces at work when you try to push a filing cabinet. Create an applied force and see the resulting friction force and total force acting on the cabinet. Charts show the forces, position, velocity, and acceleration vs. time. View a Free Body Diagram of all the forces (including gravitational and normal forces).
Explore the forces at work when you try to push a filing …
Explore the forces at work when you try to push a filing cabinet. Create an applied force and see the resulting friction force and total force acting on the cabinet. Charts show the forces, position, velocity, and acceleration vs. time. View a Free Body Diagram of all the forces (including gravitational and normal forces).
Learn how to make waves of all different shapes by adding up …
Learn how to make waves of all different shapes by adding up sines or cosines. Make waves in space and time and measure their wavelengths and periods. See how changing the amplitudes of different harmonics changes the waves. Compare different mathematical expressions for your waves.
Match shapes and numbers to earn stars in this fractions game. Challenge …
Match shapes and numbers to earn stars in this fractions game. Challenge yourself on any level you like. Try to collect lots of stars! The main topics of this interactive simulation include fractions, equivalent fractions, and mixed numbers.
Explore fractions while you help yourself to 1/3 of a chocolate cake …
Explore fractions while you help yourself to 1/3 of a chocolate cake and wash it down with 1/2 a glass of orange juice! Create your own fractions using fun interactive objects. Match shapes and numbers to earn stars in the fractions games. Challenge yourself on any level you like. Try to collect lots of stars!
This class provides an introduction to quantitative models and qualitative frameworks for …
This class provides an introduction to quantitative models and qualitative frameworks for studying complex engineering systems. Also taught is the art of abstracting a complex system into a model for purposes of analysis and design while dealing with complexity, emergent behavior, stochasticity, non-linearities and the requirements of many stakeholders with divergent objectives. The successful completion of the class requires a semester-long class project that deals with critical contemporary issues which require an integrative, interdisciplinary approach using the above models and frameworks.
This design-based subject provides a first course in energy and thermo-sciences with …
This design-based subject provides a first course in energy and thermo-sciences with applications to sustainable energy-efficient architecture and building technology. No previous experience with subject matter is assumed. After taking this subject, students will understand introductory thermodynamics and heat transfer, know the leading order factors in building energy use, and have creatively employed their understanding of energy fundamentals and knowledge of building energy use in innovative building design projects. This year, the focus will be on design projects that will complement the new NSTAR/MIT campus efficiency program.
During a scavenger hunt and an art project, students learn how to …
During a scavenger hunt and an art project, students learn how to use a handheld GPS receiver for personal navigation. Teachers can request assistance from the Institute of Navigation to find nearby members with experience in using GPS and in locating receivers to use.
The purpose of the course is to cultivate the sensibilities necessary for …
The purpose of the course is to cultivate the sensibilities necessary for effective planning practice. This objective rests on one key assumption: that a set of key sensibilities creates the right mindset for practice.
What can we learn about science and technology--and what can we do …
What can we learn about science and technology--and what can we do with that knowledge? Who are we" in these questions?--whose knowledge and expertise gets made into public policy, new medicines, topics of cultural and political discourse, science education, and so on? How can expertise and lay knowledge about science and technology be reconciled in a democratic society? How can we make sense of the interactions of living and non-living, humans and non-humans, individual and collectivities in the production of scientific knowledge and technologies? The course takes these questions as entry points into an ever-growing body of work to which feminist, anti-racist, and other critical analysts and activists have made significant contributions. The course also takes these questions as an invitation to practice challenging the barriers of expertise, gender, race, class, and place that restrict wider access to and understanding of the production of scientific knowledge and technologies. In that spirit, students participate in an innovative, problem-based learning (PBL) approach that allows them to shape their own directions of inquiry and develop their skills as investigators and prospective teachers. At the same time the PBL cases engage students' critical faculties as they learn about existing analyses of gender, race, and the complexities of science and technology, guided by individualized bibliographies co-constructed with the instructors and by the projects of the other students. Students from all fields and levels of preparation are encouraged to join the course."
Build a gene network! The lac operon is a set of genes …
Build a gene network! The lac operon is a set of genes which are responsible for the metabolism of lactose in some bacterial cells. Explore the effects of mutations within the lac operon by adding or removing genes from the DNA.
This course examines contemporary and historical cultural production on and from Africa …
This course examines contemporary and historical cultural production on and from Africa across a range of registers, including literary, musical and visual arts, material culture, and science and technology. It employs key theoretical concepts from anthropology and social theory to analyze these forms and phenomena. It also uses case studies to consider how Africa articulates its place in, and relationship to, the world through creative practices. Discussion topics are largely drawn from Francophone and sub-Saharan Africa, but also from throughout the continent and the African diaspora.
This lesson introduces students to the concepts of air pollution and technologies …
This lesson introduces students to the concepts of air pollution and technologies that have been developed by engineers to reduce air pollution. Students develop an understanding of visible air pollutants with an incomplete combustion demonstration, a "smog in a jar" demonstration, construction of simple particulate matter collectors and by exploring engineering roles related to air pollution. Next, students develop awareness and understanding of the daily air quality and trends in air quality using the Air Quality Index (AQI) listed in the newspaper. Finally, students build and observe a variety of simple models in order to develop an understanding of how engineers use these technologies to clean up and prevent air pollution.
This lesson introduces the MRI Safety Grand Challenge question. Students are asked …
This lesson introduces the MRI Safety Grand Challenge question. Students are asked to write journal responses to the question and brainstorm what information they will need to answer the question. The ideas are shared with the class and recorded. Students then watch a video interview with a real life researcher to gain a professional perspective on MRI safety and brainstorm any additional ideas. The associated activity provides students the opportunity to visualize magnetic fields.
Students are introduced to the Robotics Peripheral Vision Grand Challenge question. They …
Students are introduced to the Robotics Peripheral Vision Grand Challenge question. They are asked to write journal responses to the question and brainstorm what information they require to answer the question. Their ideas are shared with the class and recorded. Then, students share their ideas with each other and brainstorm any additional ideas. Next, students draw a basis for the average peripheral vision of humans and then compare that range to the range of two different focal lengths in a camera. Through the associated activity provides, students see the differences between human and computer vision.
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