Research bridge designs—truss, arch, and suspension—and plan your build. You’ll get a set budget and shop at our classroom store for materials, so spend wisely. Build, test, and tweak your bridge to maximize strength without blowing your budget. On testing day, we’ll load each bridge and compare results, highlighting smart designs that carried big weight for a good price.
Design and build your own penny hockey board using our woodworking machines—measure, cut, drill, and sand for a smooth, fast surface. Customize the layout with goals and bumpers, then add your design with paint, stain, or decals. We’ll playtest your boards, practice trick shots—bankers, ricochets, and long bombs—and get tournament-ready for the class showdown. Because lastly, we’ll run a class tournament using everyone’s boards and see which strategies score the most points.
You’ll explore how disasters—high winds, floods, and earthquakes—damage homes and which design features help resist them (bracing, strong joints, raised foundations, roof shape). Sketch a plan and build a scale-model “disaster-proof” house using classroom materials. Run simulated wind, water, and shake tests, recording what holds up and where it fails. Iterate your design and compare results to see which houses stay standing and keep the interior best protected.
Learn how transition radius and park flow shape speed, lines, and smooth turns. Sketch your layout—quarter pipes, banks, rails, and a funbox—and plan how each feature connects for clean runs. Build your custom Tech Deck mini park from classroom materials, then playtest your lines and dial in your favorite tricks. Finally, session your park for fun, show off your best lines in a mini jam, and take your creation home.
Explore how magnetic levitation works—polarity, attraction vs. repulsion, and how reducing friction makes cars fly down the track. Design and build a MagLev car by aligning magnets on your chassis and the guide track for lift and stability. Run test laps, then tweak magnet placement, weight, and steering fins to improve glide and control. We’ll finish with timed runs and head to head races to see which designs travel the fastest.
Learn how joints, balance, and reach affect a fighter’s moves. Build your wooden Balloon Fighter with movable joints, a shield, a spear, and a balloon head. Playtest footwork and defense, then tweak your design for stability, reach, and control. Enter the arena for head-to-head matches—pop your opponent’s balloon before they pop yours!
In this self-paced unit, you’ll learn 3D modeling with SketchUp using step-by-step tutorials. Start small to master the basics—orbit, measure, push/pull, groups/components—then design your own original model. You’ll export your work as an STL, choose simple print settings (layer height, infill, supports), and prep it for the printer. Finally, we’ll print your design on our Flash Forge Finder 3 and see how your idea turns into a real object.
In this self-paced coding unit, you’ll work in the computer lab using Code.org and Scratch. You’ll learn core concepts—sequences, loops, events, conditionals, and variables—through bite-sized puzzles and tutorials. Then you’ll create your own projects: animations, mini-games, and interactive stories you can share. Move at your own speed, hit the checkpoints, and level up your skills as you go.