Mini Projects, only $2.95
3-D Visualization Practice with Cube Puzzles
Solving Piet Hein’s cube puzzles gives students great experience with the 3-D visualization skills essential to success with drafting, CAD and engineering graphics. Mini project, only $2.95.
Biotechnology: Waste Management
Students learn how toxic waste makes its way into water systems, what radioactive elements such as plutonium, cesium and uranium are made up of, and how these radioactive materials can be measured at a waste site. Mini project, only $2.95.
Career Posters
This activity combines researching the details of various technical careers with creation of a poster that organizes and displays gathered information. Students can introduce their posters through two-minute oral presentations. Mini project, only $2.95.
Creating a Coin Sorter
With simple materials (cloth, paper plates, plastic cups, tape, thread, etc.), students design and construct a device to sort pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters. Mini project, only $2.95.
Cryptology
Scytale transposition ciphers, substitution ciphers, picture alphabets, grill ciphers and one-time systems are all covered. Includes two encryption activities, one of which requires middle schoolers to build and use an encryption wheel. Mini project, only $2.95.
Descriptive Geometry Project
Descriptive geometry shows that engineering answers may be found two ways: by using math and by drafting an answer. Mini project, only $2.95.
Designing Machine Elements in CAD
Introduce postsecondary CAD students to elements of three-dimensional industrial design. Mini project, only $2.95.
Electric Power: Decisions for the Future
Extensive background on the use of electricity in the U.S., plus an experiment for individual students related to personal electricity use and strategies for conservation. Mini project, only $2.95.
Engineering Design: Testing Paper Clip Strength
This project discusses the roles of failure, conflict and serendipity, as well as production concerns involved in engineering design, and includes an engaging, low-cost fatigue-testing activity. Mini project, only $2.95.
Factory Layout and Planning
Discusses the different advantages of process plants and product plants, and eight essential qualities of safe and maximally efficient factories. Middle schoolers then design their own toy factory layout. Project includes machine template, room patterns and accessories. Mini project, only $2.95.
Fire as Technology
A one-week activity gives students ample research and design practice and shows the life-or-death importance of technological creativity and persistence. Mini project, only $2.95.
Gears
What a gear is, how are they used, how they work and how to figure out gear ratios are all covered in this project. Students then build their own machines and measure the gear ratio of their gear train. Mini project, only $2.95.
Ground Effect Vehicles
Students study hydrofoils, aerofoils and hovercrafts—vehicles designed to skim across bodies of water while transporting people and things. Project culminates in students building a tabletop hovercraft. Mini project, only $2.95.
Lasers
Four separate activities make up this laser project. Students design and arrange the course of a laser, then learn how to draw and measure angles using protractors. Next they draw shapes and check their accuracy using a laser, and finally try their hand at laser surveying. Mini project, only $2.95.
Manufacturing: PHD Blocks
The "pretty hard drawing" (PHD) block activities give students practice with computer-aided drafting (CAD), which is used in the manufacturing process to create working drawings of products and their subcomponents. Mini project, only $2.95.
Mass Producing a Paper-Cup Dispenser
Mass-producing this paper-cup dispenser teaches both mass-production procedures and woodworking skills. Mini project, only $2.95.
Planned Community
You don’t have to look very far to find a planned community nowadays, they’re all around us. In this activity, students individually construct one piece of property, following strict covenants, that together will make up one large planned community. Mini project, only $2.95.
Platonic Solids
Students learn to identify the five platonic solids (tetrahedron, hexahedron, octahedron, dodecahedron, icosahedron) and construct paper models. They then play a baseball board game that uses the dodecahedron-like dice. Mini project, only $2.95.
Pneumatics
Background on the use of pneumatics in industry, along with an introduction to the components of a pneumatic system (regulator, pressure gauge, valve and cylinder). Plus procedure for constructing a durable pneumatics mockup board and a pneumatic-circuit-design activity for students. Mini project, only $2.95.
Power: Magnetic Levitation
Introduce your middle schoolers to the principles of magnetic levitation and build a Maglev train! Includes test questions, directions for assembling a Maglev train and Maglev train evaluation questions. Mini project, only $2.95.
Space Dock & Worm Hole
In manufacturing, if an error is made and not corrected at the beginning of an assembly, the error may grow and grow. This concept is explored by having students plot the travel path of a space ship to its home base. The "Worm Hole" activity helps students locate points on a grid while using a protractor and ruler. Mini project, only $2.95.
Structures and Bridges
After learning about the forces of tension, compression and shear, students build a simple beam-and-truss bridge to test for its resistance against these forces. Mini project, only $2.95.
Submarines: Building a Water Elevator
With a syringe, plastic hose and container for water, students build a small-scale elevator system in which they can submerge and raise a small capsule. Mini project, only $2.95.
Supertankers
Background on the physics involved in keeping heavy ships afloat, plus activities for building four types of small-scale boats. Mini project, only $2.95.
Technical Reading and Writing
Introduce your students to the simple techniques of technical reading and writing. Includes a project in which students create a CD-ROM Book Report. Mini project, only $2.95.
Time-Motion Study
Students set up, perform and analyze time-motion studies like those performed in industry. Mini project, only $2.95.
Transportation Signals
Background on the many types of signals used in transportation, along with plans and schematics for four model signaling devices that students can make: traffic stoplight, train crossing guard, ambulance light and semaphore message light. Plus instructions for a semaphore maze game. Mini project, only $2.95.
Turbines
Build a simple turbine engine and teach your students about the uses for and principles behind water, steam, gas and wind turbines. Mini project, only $2.95.
Twenty-Second Timer
Using simple materials (paper cups, rubber bands, paper clips, plastic straws, etc.) students construct a timing device and learn the process of problem solving. From Technology Projects for the Classroom, in ready-to-use format. Mini project, only $2.95.
Understanding Automotive Relays
Many students have trouble understanding and working with relays. A trainer board and accompanying activity can provide just the help they need to be informed about relay design, function and testing. Mini project, only $2.95.
Wanted! Famous Technologists Posters
Students practice research, word processing, design and information technology skills, and learn a bit of technology history, in the course of making a poster of a notable technologist or inventor. Mini project, only $2.95.
Wing on a String
This inexpensive activity teaches students Bernoulli’s principle and how air speed affects lift--clearly demonstrating how heavier-than-air flight occurs. Mini project, only $2.95.
Wooden Game Project
This lab activity makes an excellent mass-production project. Mini project, only $2.95.
The Wright Brothers' Bat
Wilbur and Orville Wright first showed interest in flight during childhood play with a toy helicopter they called "the Bat." Students can build their own bats using simple materials, then experiment and compete with flying them. Mini project, only $2.95.
Subject Codes:
- A — Applied Academics
- B — Building Trades / Construction
- C— Communication
- D — Drafting / Design / CAD
- E — Electricity / Electronics / Computer Technology
- G — Grading / Assessment
- M — Manufacturing
- PE — Power / Energy
- P — Problem Solving / Pre-Engineering
- S — Great for Substitutes
- T — Transportation
- W — Woodworking
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