Research & Design

Concussions are a common sports injury. After reviewing Newton’s laws of motion, force diagrams, momentum, and elastic and inelastic collisions, students will test various materials that might protect the head from sports collisions and use those materials to design protective headgear.

Students will answer questions about the Science News article “Concussion leaves clues in the blood,” which examines the search for a better way to diagnose concussions.

Drawing on their experiences with how sound behaves in different spaces, students will explore the engineering process by designing and sketching a room to meet specific sound requirements.

With inspiration from the SN 10 scientists, students will explore how their own interests combined with collaboration with a partner can lead to a specific science research question.

Students will practice designing an integrated circuit that can accomplish a simple task. The activity will help students understand that digital circuits are composed of logic gates made up of transistors.

These discussion prompts ask students to design solutions to problems insect farmers might face and think through the implementation and potential consequences of those solutions.

Students will explore similarities and differences in how scientific research is reported in a journalistic article versus a primary research paper.

These discussion prompts encourage students to apply their knowledge of experimental design.

Students will use common materials to design, build and test their own water purification system.

These discussion prompts ask students to define key science terms related to social science, experimental design and statistics, and to dig deeper into the methodology of experimental design.

To explore the steps of experimental design, students will plan an experiment to make an ideal sugar cookie.

These discussion prompts encourage students to put themselves in the shoes of researchers studying animal weaponry, by evaluating, proposing and mapping out an experiment.