In this resource students are to play the role of a graduate structural engineer for a major construction company, given the task of designing a steel bridge to carry a railway across a major motorway.

As part of the process learners have to analyse the proposed pin-jointed steel truss bridge by solving...

In this resource students are to play the role of a graduate engineer working to build a two mile by-pass around a small rural village for a major contractor.

The task is to determine the alignment of the new road using information provided by the company that designed it. To do this learners will need to...

In this resource students are asked to test and monitor the strength of concrete specimens brought in to a materials testing laboratory.

In this exercise learners will consider some of the statistical issues that are relevant to the testing and control of concrete quality based on the testing of concrete...

In this resource students are asked to play the role of a newly qualified engineering graduate that has taken a year out to work for an overseas aid agency in a developing country.

The civil engineering project you are working on aims to provide water to a number of rural villages where clean water for...

In this Science upd8 activity students use their understanding of simple circuits, electricity and magnetism to diagnose and fix problems with the running of a magnetic train in a theme park.

A National STEM Learning Centre and Network Engineering Case Studies resource investigating the design process involved in developing a paper cup for manufacture.

You wouldn't believe making a paper cup could be...

This activity shows how to accomplish a simple, but nevertheless seemingly impossible task -making a fair random choice by flipping a coin, between two people who don’t necessarily trust each other, and are connected only by a telephone. The resource begins with a detailed explanation of the activity and...

In this biology extension module of the Salters’ Science course, an exhibition of foods is used to introduce examples of using microbes in food processing. Students make sauerkraut and learn about the establishment of microbial populations in new habitats. Positive uses...

The workbook contains a number of simulations designed to aid students understanding of the Poisson distribution.

[b]Queuing simulation:[/b] is designed to introduce the Poisson distribution through a realistic application, that of simulating a supermarket checkout queue. Students choose the number of people...

The movement of tectonic plates against each other can cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and most active volcanoes on the Earth are located along the edge of these plates. Volcanoes can also occur far away from plate boundaries, although this is less common.

These volcanoes are maintained by hotspots...

This pack of worksheets, produced by the Spode Group, is designed to give students experience in problem solving during the early years of secondary school, and was written in response to publications encouraging the teaching mathematics through problem solving,...

This activity, from the Royal Observatory Greenwich, introduces students to ways of combining errors (uncertainties) from two independent measured quantities. Using the equation for Doppler shift, the error in the rotational velocity and time period are calculated....

Using the context of archaeological science, students investigate the food and diet of the people of Stonehenge and the nearby settlement of Durrington Walls, 4500 years ago. There are opportunities for students to test rates of reactions between milk and acids or enzymes used in cheese making, to consider the...

This excel file deals with the puzzle where a number between 1 and 63 is chosen. That number can be seen on some of a set of six cards. The number can easily be calculated by looking at the cards containing that number. This puzzle is based on binary numbers and the fact that any number can be uniquely expressed as...

This Problem Solving with Industry module was devised by the Centre for Science Education in collaboration with Willis Carroon North Limited and South Yorkshire Police. In this module the problem is to choose the most appropriate electronically-controlled security...