Students take on design and testing challenges drawn from real infrastructure, including filters, towers, dams, and stormwater improvements, with budgets and constraints.
345 materials · refine in the catalog
Grades 5–6 Lab / experiment
Teams build two column water filters in different layer orders, pour standardized muddy water through each, and compare clarity data in a fair, science-fair-ready test.
Grades 6–7 Project
Teams map their schoolyard's hard and soft surfaces, calculate real stormwater runoff in gallons, trace where it drains, and pitch a fix to a real school decision-maker.
Grade 10 Project
Grade 10 teams size a rainwater cistern for a school garden, priced by tank surface area, to store 4,000 gallons on a 12-foot pad for $6,000 or less.
Grade 11 Lab / experiment
A grade 11 lab where students track osmosis into dialysis tubing holding 20% and 40% sucrose, estimate osmotic pressure, and weigh reverse-osmosis trade-offs.
Grade 6 Classroom activity
A grade 6 engineering station rotation where teams score competing constructed-wetland design options on a rubric, then combine the best features into one class design.
Grade 6 Lab / experiment
Students build three weir plates, read the water height at a slow and a fast flow, and pick the notch shape that meets a fictional gauge's three rules.