Students learn the concept of angular momentum and its correlation to mass, velocity and radius. They experiment with rotation and an object's mass distribution. In an associated literacy activity, students use basic methods of comparative mythology to consider why spinning and weaving are common motifs in creation myths and folktales.

This course uses readings and discussions to focus on a series of short-term events that shed light on American politics, culture, and social organization. It emphasizes finding ways to make sense of these complicated, highly traumatic events, and on using them to understand larger processes of change in American history. The class also gives students experience with primary documentation research through a term paper assignment.

This subject introduces the history of science from antiquity to the present. Students consider the impact of philosophy, art, magic, social structure, and folk knowledge on the development of what has come to be called "science" in the Western tradition, including those fields today designated as physics, biology, chemistry, medicine, astronomy and the mind sciences. Topics include concepts of matter, nature, motion, body, heavens, and mind as these have been shaped over the course of history. Students read original works by Aristotle, Vesalius, Newton, Lavoisier, Darwin, Freud, and Einstein, among others.

The purpose of this task is to give students an opportunity to explore various aspects of exponential models (e.g., distinguishing between constant absolute growth and constant relative growth, solving equations using logarithms, applying compound interest formulas) in the context of a real world problem with ties to developing financial literacy skills.

Students build on their understanding and feel for flow rates, as gained from the associated Faucet Flow Rate activity, to estimate the flow rate of a local river. The objective is to be able to relate laboratory experiment results to the environment. They use the U.S. Geological Survey website (http://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/rt) to determine the actual flow rate data for their river, and compare their estimates to the actual flow rate. For this activity to be successful, choose a nearby river and take a field trip or show a video so students gain a visual feel for the flow of the nearby river.

Students learn how water is used to generate electricity. They investigate water's potential-to-kinetic energy transformation in hands-on activities about falling water and waterwheels. During the activities, they take measurements, calculate averages and graph results. Students also learn the history of the waterwheel and how engineers use water turbines in hydroelectric power plants today. They discover the advantages and disadvantages of hydroelectric power. In a literacy activity, students learn and write about an innovative new hydro-electrical power generation technology.

The 1930s saw a steadily increasing campaign of Japanese aggression in China, beginning with the invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and culminating in the outbreak of full-scale war between the two powers in 1937. Each instance of aggression resulted in denunciations from the United States, but the administrations of the time understood that there was no will on the part of the American public to fight a war in East Asia.

The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe is one of those books that we all know even if we have never read it. With his first work of fiction, Daniel Defoe–a businessman turned poet, journalist, and political propagandist–created a character who very quickly went on to have a life that went well beyond the pages of the book that first appeared, without build-up, fanfare, or even the author’s name on the title page, in April 1719. Robinson Crusoe was an immediate bestseller; the bookseller went through several editions in the first year alone. By August, Defoe had produced a sequel, The Farther Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, a work that he wrote quickly in part to head off the possibility that someone else might beat him to it. Over the last three hundred years, the story of a person isolated on a deserted island or something like it, has been used by dozens, maybe hundreds of writers, who have made it a genre of its own, the “Robinsoniad,” a genre that includes satirical parodies like Gulliver’s Travels, children’s books like The Swiss Family Robinson, Bugs Bunny cartoons, television situation comedies like Gilligan’s Island, and science fiction works like The Martian. Robinson Crusoe, the man and the book in which he first appeared, has become one of the foundational myths of the modern world.The story of one man’s survival has become so well known in all of these instances that it can be difficult to see through the mythology to analyze Defoe’s original book and to imagine what its first readers might have noticed and found so striking. It is important to recognize, for example, that the book is told in the first person, by a narrator who never lets on that this is a work of fiction. Defoe’s name, as noted above, did not appear on the title page of the first edition (although it quickly became clear to those in the know that he was the author), or even in any of the many editions issued in his lifetime. Although the book is famous for the many years that Crusoe spends on the island, it takes a while for him to get there, and his experiences both before and after his time there are worth paying attention to for the way that they frame the central experience. Defoe’s prose is sometimes clunky-he has a tendency to shape sentences and paragraphs that would never pass muster with a modern copyeditor–but it is also capable of great beauty and insight, and rewards careful attention.

Students learn various topics associated with the circle through studying a clock. Topics include reading analog time, understanding the concept of rotation (clockwise vs. counter-clockwise), and identifying right angles and straight angles within circles. Many young students have difficulty telling time in analog format, especially with fewer analog clocks in use (compared to digital clocks). This includes the ability to convert time written in words to a number format, for example, making the connection between "quarter of an hour" to 15 minutes. Students also find it difficult to convert "quarter of an hour" to the number of degrees in a circle. This activity incorporates a LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT robot to help students distinguish and visualize the differences in clockwise vs. counter-clockwise rotation and right vs. straight angles, while learning how to tell time on an analog clock. To promote team learning and increase engagement, students work in teams to program and control the robot.

Through the two lessons and five activities in this unit, students' knowledge of sensors and motors is integrated with programming logic as they perform complex tasks using LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT robots and software. First, students are introduced to the discipline of engineering and "design" in general terms. Then in five challenge activities, student teams program LEGO robots to travel a maze, go as fast/slow as possible, push another robot, follow a line, and play soccer with other robots. This fifth unit in the series builds on the previous units and reinforces the theme of the human body as a system with sensors performing useful functions, not unlike robots. Through these design challenges, students become familiar with the steps of the engineering design process and come to understand how science, math and engineering including computer programming are used to tackle design challenges and help people solve real problems. PowerPoint® presentations, quizzes and worksheets are provided throughout the unit.

Students continue to build a rigorous background in human sensors and their engineering equivalents by learning about electronic touch, light, sound and ultrasonic sensors that measure physical quantities somewhat like eyes, ears and skin. Specifically, they learn about microphones as one example of sound sensors, how sounds differ (intensity, pitch) and the components of sound waves (wavelength, period, frequency, amplitude). Using microphones connected to computers running (free) Audacity® software, student teams experiment with machine-generated sounds and their own voices and observe the resulting sound waves on the screen, helping them to understand that sounds are waves. Students take pre/post quizzes, complete a worksheet and watch two short online videos about "seeing" sound.

Students learn how two LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT intelligent bricks can be programmed so that one can remotely control the other. They learn about the components and functionality in the (provided) controller and receiver programs. When its buttons are pressed, the NXT brick assigned as the remote control device uses the controller program to send Bluetooth® messages. When the NXT taskbot/brick assigned as the receiver receives certain Bluetooth messages, it moves, as specified by the receiver program. Students examine how the programs and devices work in tandem, gaining skills as they play "robot soccer." As the concluding activity in this unit, this activity provides a deeper dimension of understanding programming logic compared to previous activities in this unit and introduces the relatively new and growing concept of wireless communication. A PowerPoint® presentation, pre/post quizzes and a worksheet are provided.

Students solidify their understanding of the terms "circumference" and "rotation" through the use of LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT robotics components. They measure the circumference of robot wheels to determine how far the robot can travel during one rotation of an NXT motor. They sharpen their metric system measurement skills by precisely recording the length of a wheel's circumference in centimeters, as well as fractions of centimeters. Through this activity, students practice brainstorming ways to solve a problem when presented with a given scenario, improve their ability to measure and record lengths to different degrees of precision, and become familiar with common geometric terms (such as perimeter and rotation).

Students groups act as NASA/GM engineers challenged to design, build and test robotic hands, which are tactile feedback systems made from cloth gloves and force sensor circuits. Student groups construct force sensor circuits using electric components and FlexiForce sensors to which resistance changes based on the applied force. They conduct experiments to find the mathematical relationship between the force applied to the sensor and the output voltages of the circuit. They take several measurements force vs. resistance, force vs. voltage and use the data to find the best fit curve models for the sensor. Different weights applied to the sensor are used as a scalable force. Students use traditional methods and current technology (calculators) to plot the collected data and define the curve equations. Students test their gloves and use a line of best fit to determine the minimum force required to crack an egg held between the index finger and thumb. A PowerPoint(TM) file and many student handouts are included.

Students learn and practice how to find the perimeter of a polygonal shape. Using a ruler, they measure model rooms made of construction paper walls. They learn about other tools, such as a robot, that can help them take measurements. Using a robot built from a LEGO® MINDSTORMS® NXT kit that has been programmed to move along a wall and output the length of that wall, students record measurements and compare the perimeter value found with the robot to the perimeter found using a ruler. In both cases, students sketch maps to the scale of the model room and label the measured lengths. A concluding discussion explores the ways in which using a robot may be advantageous or disadvantageous, and real-world applications.

This unit is designed for advanced programming classes. It leads students through a study of human vision and computer programming simulation. Students apply their previous knowledge of arrays and looping structures to implement a new concept of linked lists and RGB decomposition in order to solve the unit's Grand Challenge: writing a program to simulate peripheral vision by merging two images. This unit connects computer science to engineering by incorporating several science topics (eye anatomy, physics of light and color, mathematics, and science of computers) and guides students through the design process in order to create final simulations.

Students learn about humankind’s search for life in outer space and how it connects to robotics and engineering. NASA is interested in sending exploratory missions to one of Jupiter’s moons, Europa, which requires a lot of preparatory research and development on Earth before it can happen. One robot currently being engineered as a proof of concept for a possible trip to explore Europa is the Icefin, which is an innovative robot that can explore under ice and in water, which are the believed conditions on Europa. This lesson provides students with intriguing information about far off (distance and time!) space missions and field robotics, and also sets up two associated robotics and arts integration activities to follow. The lesson can be used individually to provide new information to students, or as a precursor to the associated activities. A PowerPoint® presentation and worksheet are provided.

In a simulation of potential future space missions to Europa, one of Jupiter’s moons, student teams are challenged to direct a robot placed in an enclosed maze to search for and find the most “alien life.” The robot is equipped with a camera to send a live feed of its surroundings in the maze. Students control the robot from outside the maze by looking at the live feed on a smartphone and using the robot’s remote control, making a map as they go. The student teams compete as if they are space agencies creating their own exploratory systems to meet the challenge’s criteria and constraints and prove “in the field” that they have the best plan to win the mission contract and get the job. This activity simulates the real-world research of scientists and engineers developing a robot with the capabilities to explore under the ice-covered surface of Europa.

Students see and learn how crystallization and inhibition occur by making sugar crystals with and without additives in a supersaturation solution, testing to see how the additives may alter crystallization, such as by improving crystal growth by more or larger crystals. After three days, students analyze the differences between the control crystals and those grown with additives, researching and attempting to deduce why certain additives blocked crystallization, showed no change or improved growth. Students relate what they learn from the rock candy experimentation to engineering drug researchers who design medicines for targeted purposes in the human body. Conduct the first half of this activity one day before presenting the associated lesson, Body Full of Crystals. Then conduct the second half of the activity.