Challenge: Glowing Cyclops
Mastery Area: Engineer
Big Idea: In a circuit, electricity moves from an area of high potential energy (negative charge) to an area of low potential energy (positive charge), powering an output.
Real World Challenge: Using a battery, copper tape, and an LEDs create a simple circuit that lights an LED. This circuit will power a single glowing eye in a face that you design.
Challenge: Ready, Set, Go! Squishy Circuits Traffic Control
Mastery Area: Engineer
Big Idea: Some materials conduct electricity and some don’t. In a series circuit, components are connected along a single path.
Real World Challenge: Make a tactile circuit using squishy clay, and use it to power a stoplight that signals cars on the racetrack in the Design Derby Challenge.
Challenge: Wearable LED Superhero Bracelet
Mastery Area: Engineer
Big Idea: In a circuit, electricity moves from an area of high potential energy (negative charge) to an area of low potential energy (positive charge). Ohm’s law states that the current through a conductor between two points is directly proportional to the potential difference across the two points.
Real World Challenge: Create your own light-up, wearable fashions using LEDs and soft circuits sewn with conductive thread on colorful fabric.
Challenge: Tower of Power
Mastery Area: Designer
Big Idea: Different materials, geometric shapes, and structural supports keep tall buildings standing.
Real World Challenge: Design and create a structure to add to our cardboard city, and see if your skyscraper stands up to gale-force winds.
Challenge: Design Derby
Mastery Area: Designer
Big Idea: Lots of factors and forces determine the speed of a vehicle: mass, acceleration, momentum, friction, aerodynamics, balance.
Real World Challenge: Design and assemble a mini-car and race it against other cars on different tracks.
Challenge: Elephant Coffee Break
Mastery Area: Designer
Big Idea: When we design any new object, we have to think about the user we’re designing for, and make decisions about scale, shape, and size based on the needs and requirements of our end user.
Real World Challenge: How does an elephant drink? What shape would be best for an elephant’s coffee cup? Design and create a 3D model of the perfect coffee cup for an elephant.
Challenge: Blizzard Blitz
Mastery Area: Programmer
Big Idea: In computer programming, variables are used to store information that can change dynamically. By changing the variables in this program, you can increase the amount, speed, size of snowflakes in the blizzard, and even change the direction in which the snow is falling!
Real World Challenge: Manipulate a computer generated particle system—a snowfall–and watch the snowflakes fall and fly!
Challenge: Image Spinner
Mastery Area: Artist/Storyteller
Big Idea: When we see two images flash by in rapid succession, an afterimage of the second image stays in our mind even as we perceive the next image, a phenomenon called persistence of vision. Persistence of vision allows us to perceive sequences of images, like those in a movie, as a continuous picture.
Real World Challenge: Create your own version of the antique Victorian era toy that merges two separate images into one on a spinning disk.
Challenge: Comic Strip Mash-Up
Mastery Area: Artist/Storyteller
Big Idea: A three-panel comic strip is a mini-narrative, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Every story needs a set-up, a conflict, and resolution. If you know one element, you can play with the others.
Real World Challenge: Borrow a frame and an idea from an old comic to make a totally new three-panel story of your own.
Challenge: Stop Motion Mini-Movie
Mastery Area: Artist/Storyteller
Big Idea: When we play a collection of sequential images or frames at a fast enough speed, they become a continuous, animated movie.
Real World Challenge: Make a 7-second stop-motion animation using action figures and sets that tells a mini-story with a beginning, middle, and end. Upload your movie to the web and share your story!