Students are challenged to think as biomedical engineers and brainstorm ways to administer medication to a patient who is unable to swallow. They learn about the advantages and disadvantages of current drug delivery methods—oral, injection, topical, inhalation and suppository—and pharmaceutical design considerations, including toxicity, efficacy, size, solubility/bioavailability and drug release duration. They apply their prior knowledge about human anatomy, the circulatory system, polymers, crystals and stoichiometry to real-world biomedical applications. A Microsoft® PowerPoint® presentation and worksheets are provided. This lesson prepares students for the associated activity in which they create and test large-size drug encapsulation prototypes to provide the desired delayed release and duration timing.

Student teams learn about engineering design of green fluorescent proteins (GFPs) and their use in medical research, including stem cell research. They simulate the use of GFPs by adding fluorescent dye to water and letting a flower or plant to transport the dye throughout its structure. Students apply their knowledge of GFPs to engineering applications in the medical, environmental and space exploration fields. Due to the fluorescing nature of the dye, plant life of any color, light or dark, can be used unlike dyes that can only be seen in visible light.

Students are presented with a guide to rain garden construction in an activity that culminates the unit and pulls together what they have learned and prepared in materials during the three previous associated activities. They learn about the four vertical zones that make up a typical rain garden with the purpose to cultivate natural infiltration of stormwater. Student groups create personal rain gardens planted with native species that can be installed on the school campus, within the surrounding community, or at students' homes to provide a green infrastructure and low-impact development technology solution for areas with poor drainage that often flood during storm events.

The marine environment is unique and requires technologies that can use sound to gather information since there is little light underwater. The sea-floor is characterized using underwater sound and acoustical systems. Current technological innovations are allowing scientists to further understand and apply information about animal locations and habitat. Remote sensing and exploration with underwater vehicles allows scientists to map and understand the sea floor, and in some cases, the water column. In this lesson, the students will be shown benthic habitat images produced by GIS. These imaged will lead to a class discussion on why habitat mapping is useful and how current technology works to make bathymetry mapping possible. The teacher will then ask inquiry-based questions to have students brainstorm about the importance of bathymetry mapping.

Students learn about weight by building a spring scale and observing how it responds to objects with different masses.

Students learn the purpose of a fever in the body's immune system and how it protects the body against germs. The students continue to explore temperature by creating a model thermometer and completing a temperature conversion worksheet. They come to see how engineers are involved in designing helpful medical instruments such as thermometers.

Students gain first-hand experience on how friction affects motion. They build a hovercraft using air from a balloon to levitate a craft made from a compact disc (CD), learning that a bed of air under an object significantly reduces the friction as it slides over a surface.

Building on the programming basics learned so far in the unit, students next learn how to program using sensors rather than by specifying exact durations. They start with an examination of algorithms and move to an understanding of conditional commands (until, then), which require the use of wait blocks. Working with the LEGO MINDSTORMS(TM) NXT robots and software, they learn about wait blocks and how to use them in conjunction with move blocks set with unlimited duration. To help with comprehension and prepare them for the associated activity programming challenges, volunteer students act out a maze demo and student groups conclude by programming LEGO robots to navigate a simple maze using wait block programming. A PowerPoint® presentation, a worksheet and pre/post quizzes are provided.

Students measure and analyze forces that act on vehicles pulling heavy objects while moving at a constant speed on a frictional surface. They study how the cars interact with their environments through forces, and discover which parameters in the design of the cars and environments could be altered to improve vehicles' pulling power. This LEGO® MINDSTORMS® based activity is geared towards, but not limited to, physics students.

Students are provided with a rigorous background in human "sensors" (including information on the main five senses, sensor anatomies, and nervous system process) and their engineering equivalents, setting the stage for three associated activities involving sound sensors on LEGO® robots. As they learn how robots receive input from sensors, transmit signals and make decisions about how to move, students reinforce their understanding of the human body's sensory process.

In this activity, students will simulate the equal and unequal distribution of our renewable resources. Also, they will consider the impact of our increasing population upon these resources and how engineers develop technologies to create resources.

Students apply the design process to the problem of hiding a message in a digital image using steganographic methods, a PictureEdit Java class, and API (provided as an attachment). They identify the problems and limitations associated with this task, brainstorm solutions, select a solution, and implement it. Once their messages are hidden, classmates attempt to decipher them. Based on the outcome of the testing phase, students refine and improve their solutions.

Through an overview of some of the environmental challenges facing the growing and evolving country of China today, students learn about the effects of indoor and outdoor air pollution that China is struggling to curb with the help of engineers and scientists. This includes the sources of particulate matter 2.5 and carbon dioxide, and air pollution impacts on the health of people and the environment.

In this activity, students design an innovative human shelter that is inspired and informed by an animal structure. Each group is assigned an animal class, and they gather information about shelters used by the animals in that class. After researching the topic and brainstorming ideas, students build small prototypes (models) of the structures. Finally, they present their products, explaining what attribute of the animal structure influenced their design.

In this activity, students gain first-hand experience with the mechanical advantage of pulleys. Students are given the challenge of helping save a whale by moving it from an aquarium back to its natural habitat into the ocean. They set up different pulley systems, compare the theoretical and actual mechanical advantage of each and discuss their recommendations as a class.

In this activity, students use their own creativity (and their bodies) to make longitudinal and transverse waves. Through the use of common items, they will investigate the different between longitudinal and transverse waves.

Students explore Mars and Jupiter, the fourth and fifth planets from the Sun. They learn some of the unique characteristics of these planets. They also learn how engineers help us learn about these planets with the design and development of telescopes, deep space antennas, spacecraft and planetary rovers.

Students observe and discuss a cup and pencil model of a cyclone to better understand the science behind how this pollutant recovery method functions in cleaning industrial air pollution.

Students make Moebius strips and use them to demonstrate the interconnectedness of an environment. They explore the natural cycles water, oxygen/carbon dioxide, carbon, nitrogen that exist within the environment.

In a class demonstration, students observe a simple water cycle model to better understand its role in pollutant transport. This activity shows one way in which pollution is affected by the water cycle; it simulates a point source of pollution in a lake and the resulting environmental consequences.