What is Engineering?
Day 1: Nature of Science and Engineering NSE 3-6
MSTP Region 11 Teacher Center
Today’s Trainers:
Tamara Moore and Gillian Roehrig
University of Minnesota
Introductions
Name
 School
 Grade Level
 The last thing you have done that could
be considered ‘engineering’
 One thing you hope to gain from this
professional development

Objectives
Investigate what is meant by the term
“engineering.”
 Experience what it means to engineer.
 Help students develop generalization
abilities and STEM connections through
representation and translation.
 Focus on student alternative conceptions
as a way to foster understanding.

Overview of Training
Day 1: Engineering
 Day 2: Design
 Day 3: Nature of Science
 Day 4: Inquiry
 Day 5: Modeling

Agenda
Housekeeping Items
 Our Conceptions of Engineering

◦ Draw an engineer
◦ Concept mapping

Save the Penguins! Engineering Teaching Kit
Housekeeping
Understanding the grant for professional
development
 Surveys

Individually write your thoughts

What do you think of when you imagine
an engineer at work?
Draw an Engineer
Draw a picture of an engineer at work.
Be as detailed as possible.
 Describe your picture in writing—what
is the engineer in your picture doing?

What is Engineering?
In your teams create a concept map that
portrays your ideas about “What is
Engineering?” – use your drawings as a
starting point.
 Be as detailed as possible
 You will have about 10 minutes to work.

Gallery Walk
Decide how your team is going to
present your concept map for the gallery
walk.
 Post your poster on a wall on the room’s
perimeter where everyone will be able to
see it. Keep it manned.
 Walk around the room to view other
groups’ concept maps.

What are these pictures communicating?
What are these pictures communicating?
What are these pictures communicating?
Presentation of Team Posters

As a team, discuss what your students
might believe engineering to be.
Engineering Teaching Kits
 We
are going to participate in a
modified version of an Engineering
Teaching Kit (ETK) called “Save the
Penguins”
◦ ETKs are created and copyrighted by
the University of Virginia, but may be
used by teachers in the classroom.
Day1 – Introduction/Insulation

Pre-Assessment
Provide students with context of Penguins
 Help students understand what
engineering is

◦ Comes with a Power Point presentation
Save the Penguins
Protecting the Environment
Penguins are Melting
http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=rqUvf9Rxxj4&NR=1
Innocent Victims: The Penguins
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCwPHioC660
Penguin in a Pickle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HO4UBvxE56M
Engineering
The World Without Engineers
The World Without Engineers
The World Without Engineers
What is Engineering?
Engineering Design Process
Identify the Need
 Define the Problem
 Brainstorm Ideas
 Conduct Research
 Develop Design

Revise Design

Test Design
Designing Better Cars
Cleaning Up the Ocean
Plumbing for Safer Drinking Waer
Designing Space Colonies
A Musical Shirt?
Richard Helmer
Improving Developing Countries
Control a Computer with Your Mind
Listening for Cancer
Physics

In the winter…
Physics

In the summer…
The more energy used to heat and
cool buildings,
…the more electricity or fuel (like oil) used.
 Burned fuels (like oil) create carbon dioxide.
 Power plants usually burn coal- which
produces carbon dioxide too
 Carbon dioxide is implicated in global
warming
 Global warming is not our friend.

So, How Can We
Save the
Penguins?
Day 1 - Continued

Intro to Story Boarding
Day 1 - Continued

Demonstration 1- The Cans Demo
◦ You want to bring a cold soda on a field trip and
drink it for lunch, but you want it to still be cold
when you drink it and you don’t know what the best
thing would be to keep it cold.

Which would work best?
◦
◦
◦
◦
◦
◦
Aluminum Foil
Cotton Sock
Paper Towel
Plastic Wrap
Wool Sock
Nothing
Day 1 – Heat and Temperature
Heat energy (or just heat) is a form of energy which transfers among
particles in a substance (or system) by means of kinetic energy of those
particles. In other words, the heat is transferred by particles bouncing into
each other.
Temperature is the measurement of the average kinetic energy that
particles in a substance have at a particular location.
Heat Transfer always occurs from the place where there is a higher
temperature to the place where it is cooler.
A Heat Insulator is a material that reduces the rate of heat transfer.
Day 2 – Conduction, Radiation, and
Convection
Wooden tray vs. Silver tray
 Silver spoon vs. Plastic Spoon

◦ Which one will work best to keep an ice cube
cold?
 Conduction – the way that thermal energy
(heat) transfers from one substance to another
by direct contact.
Day 2 – Hot house

Card board house with vent
◦ Black roof demo
◦ Turn house over
◦ Convection occurs when moving fluids (gases or
liquids) rise and fall due to differences in density
caused by differences in thermal energy.
Day 2 – Hot House Cont.

Roof covered with Mylar blanket (hand)
◦ The black roof absorbed the radiation from the light
source, by the Mylar reflected it away, keeping it
mostly out of the house.
◦ Radiation is the transfer of energy in the form of
electromagnetic waves.Visible and infrared light are
forms of radiation that transfer heat.
Day 3 – Experiments on Materials
You will be designing and building an igloo
that will keep a penguin-shaped ice cube
from melting in a “cooker”
 In your box, you have samples of materials
you can use.You need to test them to see
which ones you want to use.
 You will be given a budget, so decide
which ones are worth purchasing.
 (as teachers – this can be used to help
students design experiments)

Day 4 – Design your dwelling
Design your igloo
 Curriculum is set up this way:

◦ The materials in your box are “free” but you
must keep track of the cost associated with
using them.
◦ You have $250 to purchase extra materials.
We will start with $400 and nothing is
free.
 (as teachers – this can be used to
emphasize engineering design)

Cost of Items
Day 5 – Testing the Dwellings

Test the design
◦ Use plastic Dixie cup to have students measure
and record the weight of their penguins
◦ “Cook” penguins in their igloos for 20 minutes
◦ Re-weigh the remainder of the penguins and
record weight results and the cost of the igloo.
Students should storyboard their results.
◦ Students should also record their ideas for a
redesign and sketch it in a storyboard square.
Mathematics Connection
Revision and Final Testing
Make revisions of design
 Retest
 Finalize their storyboard
 Awards:
NSE Participants

◦ 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place
◦ Award for each improved design
◦ Team who came in top 50% of class but spent
theTamara
leastMoore
amount of money.07/26/10
Affordable Housing Award for Financially
Challenged Penguins!
Alternative Conceptions
The Save the Penguins ETK has potential
to address several misconceptions about
heat transfer. What are they?
 How might we repair these alternative
conceptions?

◦ Look at the demonstrations. How would
these affect your students’ conceptions?
Where should they be placed?
Alternative Conceptions about HT
• Cold is a substance that moves
• Heat is a substance that rises
• Heat is a substance like a fluid, made of particles
• Larger ice cubes are colder than small ones
• Metal is cold, plastic and wood are warm
• Aluminum foil traps “coldness”; metals hold “cold”
• Sweaters warm things
(Albert, 1978; Clough & Driver, 1985; Erickson, 1979; Erickson, 1980)
Post-Assessment
More Fun!!!
Lesh Translation Model
Lesh & Doerr (2003)
Representations Revisited
In your groups, jot down your ideas about
what representations were elicited in this
problem.
 How can you as a teacher foster multiple
representations on this problem?
Translations between representations?
 What are the “big” conceptual ideas that
are elicited in this problem?

Reflection and Exit Slip
“To investigate and experience what
engineering is”
 In your notes, write down what happened today
that brought you closer to meeting this objective.
Also, write down any questions that you have
about the day’s objective.
 On a separate piece of paper, tell us you
experience with Engineering is Elementary (EiE).
◦ With which EiE units are you very familiar?
◦ If you already know of EiE units you are interested in
learning about, which ones are they?

Turn in the sheet with the EiE information as you
leave.