Lessons
2013 Lessons
The following lessons were developed by I-RISE graduate students in collaboration with I-RISE faculty and Curriculum Specialists. If you have questions, concerns, or would like more information about these lessons, please contact us at info@irise.illinois.edu
Clearing The Way
This project is intended to expose students to the field of biomedical engineering (bioengineering) through the design and testing of solutions for clearing arteries blocked by atherosclerosis.
Prerequisites
- Ability to take an average of three numbers
- Basic knowledge of human systems (recommended but not necessary)
Instruction Time
120 minutes
Designer Bones
The purpose of this lesson is to introduce students to the concept of orthopedic implants and materials testing.
Prerequisites
None required. Knowledge of forces, compression, and tension is recommended but nor necessary.
Instruction Time
Approx. 90 minutes
Design of an Electromagnetic Door Lock
Students design a controllable door lock using an electromagnet. The lesson highlights the differences between permanent magnets and electromagnets, and focuses on their associated attractive/repulsive forces. Experiments are carried out to understand the effect of electromagnet design changes. Students finish the lesson by analyzing existing door locks to encourage a feasible design of their own.
Prerequisites
Electricity and magnetism basics. This includes a general understanding of voltage, current, electrical conductors, batteries, and permanent magnets.
Instruction Time
90-150 minutes
Let's Design a Better Electric Motor
This lesson demonstrates the physical principles harnessed to drive the electric motor. Moreover, this lesson engages students in an activity to demonstrate the impacts of engineering design choices on motor performance through the comparison of rotor diameter and number of rotor turns.
Prerequisites
Students should have a basic understanding of electric circuits and magnetism.
Instruction Time
120 minutes
Engineering in Space: Design Your Own Rover
NASA has recruited your class for their Top Secret 2020 mission. You will be one of many teams that are designing a rover to explore the newly found planet XYZ. Students will design and build terrain-specific hard-drive case prototypes to protect the sensitive hard drive from the sand, wind, heat, cold, and bumpy terrain on the planet. We are in the early stages of development, so all ideas – no matter how crazy they may seem – are encouraged!
Prerequisites
Some knowledge about space is preferred, such as the order of planets and the characteristics of space (no oxygen, freezing cold, UV radiation, etc)
Instruction Time
2.5 – 3 hours
Water Filter Design
In this lesson students will learn about the engineering design cycle and apply it in order to make a low cost water filter. In the process students will learn about: engineering trade-offs, filter materials, material porosity, and how particle size can affect the performance of a water filter.
Students will compare water filter cost and effectiveness by plotting performance and cost data on graphs. Students will also work in groups to compare the effectiveness of their designs and present their designs to the class.
Prerequisites
Students should be able to do simple addition and multiplication as well as plot data on a graph.
Instruction Time
115 min
Wind Turbine Design
In this lesson students will learn about how wind turbines work and some of the challenges involved in designing them. Students will also learn about the design process and engineering trade-offs by designing their own model wind turbines.
Prerequisites
Students should know what energy is and that it can be converted from one type to another.
Instruction Time
90 - 105 minutes
LED Circuit Design
This project allows the students to apply and further develop their knowledge of electricity and basic circuits to design, prototype, and test for the brightest and most power efficient lighting circuits using basic circuit components.
Prerequisites
It is expected that students have previously been exposed to basics of electric circuits, specifically voltage, current and resistance and Ohm's Law voltage equation. Parallel and series circuits and power calculations are also very useful knowledge for this lesson.
Instruction Time
Project requires 90 minutes without any addition extension activities
Design of a Knee Replacement
Students will design, build, test and evaluate a knee replacement to learn the engineering process.
Prerequisites
- Be able to indentify parts of the body: legs, knees, arms, elbows and fingers
- Be able to have basic knowledge of joint and muscle functioning
- Be able to solve arithmetic equations (add and subtraction)
- Be able to draw basic geometrical figures and connect them
Instruction Time
120 minutes
Propeller Powered Rocket Design
An engineering design project in which the students build and test propeller-powered rockets that move along a fishing line track. The lesson topics include experimental design and technique, engineering trade-offs, uses of quantitative data, the benefits of various forms of data representation (tables and graphs), and the engineering design cycle.
Prerequisites
Students should know how to graph data and should have been introduced to the general concept of a force.
Instruction Time
Approximately 120 minutes
Spring 2012 Lessons
Asteroid Impacts
When asteroids crash into planets and moons, they leave behind craters of different shapes and sizes. You'll have a chance to explore what causes different types of craters by making craters yourself. Learn why certain planets and moons have more craters than others, and what this tells us about the object that was struck by asteroids.
To learn more, check out my blog!
Refraction Action
Light is lazy! See how light bends when it travels from one material to another, and how that affects the way we see things!
To learn more, check out my blog!
Astrophotography
Astronomers learn a lot about the universe from the light we gather. However, there is more to light than just the colors of the rainbow. Learn how astronomers use the colors we can see to represent what our eyes can’t detect.
To learn more, check out my blog!
Wind Energy
Did you ever wonder how turning things can generate electricity? In this lesson, you can learn how that happens and design and build your own small wind mill and see it put work.
To learn more, check out my blog!
Viscosity
Have you ever played with your food? Have you ever wondered what makes the fluids around you thick or thin? Have you ever encountered Oobleck?? Come discover all of these things in the newest iRISE lesson at Edison Middle School!
To learn more, check out my blog!
Density
Did you know you can make a rainbow in a cup? Come learn how density makes it possible!
To learn more, check out my blog!
Momentum
Every object that moves will have a property known as momentum associated with it, whether it is a ball, egg, or airplane. We know that light moves. If you don’t believe me, you can take any laser pointer and try to race it. Your laser pointer that emits light will beat you every time. With this logic, light must possess momentum, too!
To learn more, check out my blog!
Spring 2011 Lessons
Convection
Did you know boiling water can create wind? Use a pinwheel to find out how we can change heat into movement.
Growing Crystals
Crystals are all around us. They can be found naturally deep in the earth or they can be made in the laboratory using chemistry. Come join us to learn how crystals "grow" and make your own crystals to bring home!
Diffusion
Diffusion is an important physical phenomenon. It dictates how fast a cup of coffee will cool off to how fast a drug will have an effect in our bodies. Students will observe how food coloring inside a gelatin capsule disperses in a beaker of water, examine how temperature and fluid properties affect the motion of the food coloring, and build a microfluidic device that allows 2-dimensional flow of food coloring.
Filtration
Filters make big impacts on your life through purifying air and drinking water, making tasty coffee drinks, and separating nutrients from wastes in our kidneys. Join us at iRISE to experiment with filters & clean polluted water.
Fluorescence in Biology
For students to understand some of the basic properties of light and how they can be used to study biology. Light is a useful tool in biology because of the ease in which it is manipulated. Owing to its unique properties, light has been used in a variety of ways, and has been used in biology at least since the discovery of the cell by Robert Hooke in the 17th century!
Electromagnets
Electromagnets are in all sorts of stuff -- cranes, high-speed trains, hospitals, and even turntables and speakers. Come learn how to convert electricity into magnetism and build your own electromagnet!
Computer Guts!
Students will be able to discover the basic components and operational theory of a desktop personal computer (PC).
Protein Factory
What do proteins do? How do you build a protein? And why in the world can't I put pineapple in my Jell-O? Learn the answers to these questions, create proteins, win prizes, and have fun!
Protein Denaturation - Eggciting Eggsperiments
We all know that protein helps us get strong and muscular, but what is a "protein" exactly? Find out why and how proteins are vital to our everyday life!
Biofuels
A bioreactor is a contained environment able to a support the growth of living organisms. Here we will describe a photo-bioreactor that uses algae to convert carbon dioxide and sunlight into energy. Algae is of great interest in the sustainable energy field as it can simultaneously capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and produce biomass that can be used to make biodiesel and bioethanol through extraction.
Harness the Power of the Sun
Watch some of the smallest living things swim with the power of sunshine!
See Your DNA
Did you know that every one of your cells has over 6 feet of DNA? If you put the DNA from every cell in your body together, end-to-end, it would reach to the moon! You can't see individual strands of DNA because they are just 2 billionths of a meter wide! In this lesson, we will extract (pull-out) the DNA from your own cheek cells and allow lots of them to clump together until they are big enough to see. Then you can take your DNA home with you inside a necklace or a keychain!!!
Nanotechnology
Come explore the world of nanotechnology!
Static Electricity
Come learn about static electricity and build a leyden jar to shock your friends!
