In this resource designed by the IET, students explore statistics and use them to decide on a ranking of football players. Football players are ranked in different ways and there are a variety of awards they can be presented with. For example, each year the Ballon D’Or is awarded to the player judged to be the ‘...

This activity, from the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), introduces students to methods of how to identify what components can be used as electronic sensors.

The resource is designed so that students...

The Pacific island nation of Kiribati recently announced its purchase of land in mountainous Fiji for its population to move to when sea level rises make life on its own low-lying islands impossible. In this activity students use data to predict sea level rises, including uncertainties, and decide whether humans...

In this resource scalene triangles are drawn on a square grid. The challenge is to find the area of the triangle.

On each student worksheet there is a different triangle, but the solutions all have something in common.

One way to find the area is to enclose the triangle in a right-angled triangle, and...

This activity, from the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), introduces students to how sensors can be used in smart applications of electronic systems.

The resource is designed so that students will know...

A smart material describes a material that senses and responds to an external stimulus or change in the environment, and where the change reverses when the stimulus or change is removed. This resource provides an introduction to the topic of smart materials, looking at the properties of different materials,...

A phase change material are substances that absorb or release energy when it changes its physical state, providing useful heating or cooling properties. Did you know that phase change materials were developed by NASA to keep astronauts comfortable in the extreme temperature fluctuations in space? This resource...

This resource looks at photochromic materials, exploring how they are used and their impact on space inspired products. The slides provide discussion points, investigation ideas and suggestions of practical experiments and products that will allow students to get hands-on with photochromic technology.

This resource explores the properties and uses of piezoelectric materials and quantum tunnelling composites. Taking examples from space technology, it provides a number of examples to discuss in the classroom and suggests practical experiments to give your students a hands-on examples of the technology.

Shape memory alloys (SMA) and shape memory polymers (SMP) remember their original shape, even after being significantly deformed, returning to their original shape in response to a stimulus. This resource explores the technology behind SMA's and SMP's, the properties that they bring to engineered products and...

This resource explores the topic of thermochromic materials. It provides content to explain what they are, how they are used and suggests practical experiments that will allow students to get hands-on with the material.

A crowd funding web site recently raised more than two million US dollars to fund solar roadways. These roads, claim the developers, will remain snow-free, and, at the click of a switch, can be transformed into car parks or even sports pitches. In this activity students consider whether solar roadways are worth...

This is one of a series of resources from the IET designed around the theme of the future of flight with the purpose of developing pupils knowledge and skills in design technology, engineering and mathematics. Jet engines used on aircraft produce...

This teaching resource is presented in four stages:

Stage One - Finding out about the problem. In stage one pupils find out more about spacesuits, how they work and why people need them to survive. They also find out more about the challenge to test a series of materials to...

This activity from the CS4FN team at QMUL is a metaphorical introduction to Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and the difficulties of working at the command line.

The whole-class activity uses a game called spit-not-so. The winner of the game is the first to choose, from a...