Projects, Lessons, Activities (Page 146)

Ping Pong Pickup Challenge for Grades 9-12

Lesson Plan Grade: 9th-12th

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In this fun engineering lesson plan, your students will build devices from paper, tape, string, and paper clips to pick up and retrieve a ping pong ball. The challenge is to pick up the ball from as far away as possible! Elementary school and middle school versions of this lesson plan are also available. The 2023 competition is over, but you can see what students built and learn about the winners on the 2023 Engineering Challenge summary page. Read more

NGSS Performance Expectations:

High School - Science & Engineering Practices

Pinocchio’s Arm: A Lie Detector Test

STEM Activity

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Did you ever think of lying as an interesting social skill? Lying is actually tied to empathy, the ability to see things from another person’s perspective. Most humans begin to develop these skills around the age of three, when they begin to understand that what they know about the world might be different from what other people know about the world. Telling lies might be a skill, but lies can be bothersome. Sometimes, you really like to know how to tell a truth from a lie. Will the… Read more

Planet Hunters TESS

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is a space telescope for NASA's Explorers program, designed to search for exoplanets using the transit method in an area 400 times larger than that covered by the Kepler mission. It was launched on April 18, 2018 atop a Falcon 9 rocket. During its two-year primary mission, it was expected to find more than 20,000 transiting exoplanets, compared to about 3,800 exoplanets known when it launched. The first light image from TESS was taken on August… Read more

Plants Are On The Move! A Study of Gravitropism

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

As we humans zip from place to place, we often forget to stop and smell the roses. Compared to our fast-paced lifestyle, plants seem rooted to the spot. Don't be deceived by appearances however, plants are on the move! This experiment will investigate the stimulus/response relationship in plants and prove that plants can move up and down in response to gravity. Read more

Play a Memory Game with Your Nose!

STEM Activity

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Take a deep breath: freshly baked cookies, smoke from a wood fire, or a bouquet of roses—your nose is an amazing smell detector! Your sense of smell can not only identify a huge variety of odors, but it is also incredibly sensitive. Think about how easily you can detect if someone in your neighborhood has a barbecue just by smelling hints of smoke from a faraway grill. But how good is your nose when it comes to differentiating individual smells? Do this activity to find out! … Read more

Play an Electronic Drumset with a Raspberry Pi

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

When you were little, did you ever make "music" in your kitchen by banging kitchen utensils on pots and pans? What if you could actually take those kitchen implements now, and play them with different sound effects? In this project, you can convert basic kitchen utensils into your own electronic drum set using a Raspberry Pi. Check out the video to see what this simple, but fun, project looks like. IMPORTANT: The instructions for this project were originally written using Scratch 2 on a… Read more

Play-Doh Math

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Have you ever had fun making different figures or colorful creations using some Play-Doh? You can squish and stretch a single piece of Play-Doh® to make all sorts of shapes. How does changing the shape of a piece of Play-Doh affect its volume? In this science project, you will find out by testing how changing a piece of dough's shape affects its dimensions (length, width, and height), and how these changes are related to the dough's volume. Read more

Playing Games

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Almost all of the games we play are based on math in some way or another. Card games, board games, and computer games are designed using statistics, probabilities, and algorithms. Begin by reading about games and game theory. Then you can choose your favorite game and investigate the mathematical principles behind how it works. Can combinatorial game theory help you to win two-player games of perfect knowledge such as go, chess, or checkers? (Weisstein, 2006; Watkins, 2004) In a multi-player… Read more

Playing Music

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Music has many mathematical elements in it: rhythm, pitch, scale, frequency, interval, and ratio. There are many ways to turn these elements into a science fair project. You can investigate how the scale is based upon a special type of number sequence called a Harmonic Series. Another scale used by Bach, called the "Well-Tempered-Scale" or the "Equal-Tempered-Scale", is based upon a series. How are these mathematical series and ratios related to notes, chords, intervals, and octaves? You can… Read more

Playing the Angles: The Physics of Balls Bouncing Off of Surfaces

Science Fair Project Idea

Scientific Method

Think of hitting a baseball, heading a soccer ball into the net, or hitting a tennis ball with a racquet. Where the ball goes depends on...what? You can set up a simple model to start your investigation. You'll need a marble, a flat piece of wood, a flat piece of cardboard, a pencil, a ruler, a protractor, and a level surface. Lay down the cardboard down on a level surface and set up the flat piece of wood at one edge. The wood will act like a wall, and you're going to roll the marble at… Read more

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