How can you tell if harmful bacteria are in your food or water that might make you sick? What you eat or drink can be contaminated with bacteria, viruses, parasites and toxins—pathogens that can be harmful or even fatal. Students learn which contaminants have the greatest health risks and how they enter the food supply. While food supply contaminants can be identified from cultures grown in labs, bioengineers are creating technologies to make the detection of contaminated food quicker, easier and more effective.

Student groups construct simple conductivity probes and then integrate them into two different circuits to test the probe behavior in solutions of varying conductivity (salt water, sugar water, distilled water, tap water). The activity culminates with student-designed experiments that utilize the constructed probes. The focus is to introduce students to the fabrication of the probe and expose them to two different ways to integrate the probe to obtain qualitative and quantitative measurements, while considering the application and utility of a conductivity probe within an engineering context. A provided handout guides teams through the process: background reading and questions; probe fabrication including soldering; probe testing and data gathering (including circuit creation on breadboard); probe connection to Arduino (including circuit creation and code entry) and a second round of testing and data gathering; design and conduct their own lab experiments that use the probes; online electrolyte/nonelectrolyte reading, short video, comprehension check and analysis questions.

This is a remix of the Exploratorium Teacher Institute's Agar Cell Diffusion resource. It offers an alternate recipe for the cell blocks using plain gelatin instead of agarose gel.

Link to original resource: https://goopenva.org/courses/agar-cell-diffusion

This resource provides a 5E style lesson (Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate) over the rock cycle, including a single-period lab using crayons to model the cycle.  It’s often a difficult concept for students to imagine that over millions of years, one kind of rock will change into another kind of rock.  This lab allows students to see the changes taking place, and learn important qualities of each type of rock and how they are formed.Photo:  Rainbow of Crayon Shavings by Richie Girardin via Flickr

This activity would be a great start to a unit on weather.  Ideally, students should create their weather instruments and use them to gather data over a period of at least several days, looking for trends in the weather such as temperature and cloud cover.  Show the weather PowerPoint to introduce weather tools and terms.  Divide students into teams of 3 or 4 to create one of the tools.  The following day, students should use the weather tool they create to take and record measurements using the “Weather Data Sheet."  Repeat this process several times over several days (or even weeks). 

Students use a block of clay, a spring scale, and a glass of liquid of unknown volume to determine the density of the liquid in the cup.

This activity can be used as an introduction to using the scientific method. It is relevant at all intermediate and high school levels( 6-12). Paper towels are used to introduce the basic steps of the scientific method and how it can be used to determine which type of paper towel is the most absorbent. Students will then use the scientific method to evaluate another property of the paper towel (e.g., strength, softness, etc).

This activity can be used as an introduction to using the scientific method. It is relevant at all intermediate and high school levels( 6-12). Paper towels are used to introduce the basic steps of the scientific method and how it can be used to determine which type of paper towel is the most absorbent. Students will then use the scientific method to evaluate another property of the paper towel (e.g., strength, softness, etc).

This activity can be used as an introduction to using the scientific method. It is relevant at all intermediate and high school levels( 6-12). Paper towels are used to introduce the basic steps of the scientific method and how it can be used to determine which type of paper towel is the most absorbent. Students will then use the scientific method to evaluate another property of the paper towel (e.g., strength, softness, etc).

This activity can be used as an introduction to using the scientific method. It is relevant at all intermediate and high school levels( 6-12). Paper towels are used to introduce the basic steps of the scientific method and how it can be used to determine which type of paper towel is the most absorbent. Students will then use the scientific method to evaluate another property of the paper towel (e.g., strength, softness, etc).

Here is a simple lab report that can be used in any science class (6-12). The report is designed to help students identify hypotheses, independent and dependent variables, controls, constants, and to analyze experiments. I have also included tips on a simple way to teach your students to identify the IV and DV through a "cave man hypothesis" and how to teach controls with less confusion.

Lesson length: 2-4 hoursGrade level: 6-8Students build models of four different biomes: forest, tundra, grasslands, and dessert. Student groups build a biome and then model climate and weather in the biome, as well as the impacts of human development and engineering mitigations in the biome.This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1657263. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

How can you tell if harmful bacteria are growing in your food? Students learn to culture bacteria in order to examine ground meat and bagged salad samples, looking for common foodborne bacteria such as E. coli or salmonella. After 2-7 days of incubation, they observe and identify the resulting bacteria. Based on their first-hand experiences conducting this conventional biological culturing process, they consider its suitability in meeting society's need for ongoing detection of harmful bacteria in its food supply, leading them to see the need for bioengineering inventions for rapid response bio-detection systems.