Students figure out that they can trace all food back to plants, including processed and synthetic food. They obtain and communicate information to explain how matter gets from living things that have died back into the system through processes done by decomposers. Students finally explain that the pieces of their food are constantly recycled between living and nonliving parts of a system.

Oh, no! I’ve dropped my phone! Most of us have experienced the panic of watching our phones slip out of our hands and fall to the floor. We’ve experienced the relief of picking up an undamaged phone and the frustration of the shattered screen. This common experience anchors learning in the Contact Forces unit as students explore a variety of phenomena to figure out, “Why do things sometimes get damaged when they hit each other?”

Student questions about the factors that result in a shattered cell phone screen lead them to investigate what is really happening to any object during a collision. They make their thinking visible with free-body diagrams, mathematical models, and system models to explain the effects of relative forces, mass, speed, and energy in collisions. Students then use what they have learned about collisions to engineer something that will protect a fragile object from damage in a collision. They investigate which materials to use, gather design input from stakeholders to refine the criteria and constraints, develop micro and macro models of how their solution is working, and optimize their solution based on data from investigations. Finally, students apply what they have learned from the investigation and design to a related design problem.

Unit Summary
In this unit, students develop ideas related to how sounds are produced, how they travel through media, and how they affect objects at a distance. Their investigations are motivated by trying to account for a perplexing anchoring phenomenon — a truck is playing loud music in a parking lot and the windows of a building across the parking lot visibly shake in response to the music.
They make observations of sound sources to revisit the K–5 idea that objects vibrate when they make sounds. They figure out that patterns of differences in those vibrations are tied to differences in characteristics of the sounds being made. They gather data on how objects vibrate when making different sounds to characterize how a vibrating object’s motion is tied to the loudness and pitch of the sounds they make. Students also conduct experiments to support the idea that sound needs matter to travel through, and they will use models and simulations to explain how sound travels through matter at the particle level.
This unit builds toward the following NGSS Performance Expectations (PEs) as described in the OpenSciEd Scope & Sequence: MS-PS4-1, MS-PS4-2. The OpenSciEd units are designed for hands-on learning and therefore materials are necessary to teach the unit. These materials can be purchased as science kits or assembled using the kit material list.

Solving circuits with differential equations is hard. If we limit ourselves to sinusoidal input signals, a whole new method of AC analysis emerges. Created by Willy McAllister.

Here's a preview of how AC analysis is going to work. To get ready we need to review some of the ideas from trig and complex numbers. Created by Willy McAllister.

We break a sinusoidal input voltage into two complex exponentials. Using superposition, we can recover the complex output signals and reassemble them into a real sinusoidal output voltage. Created by Willy McAllister.

Description: Students play with an AI that can react to their movement, and choreograph something that uses this tool. They can show off their choreography to the rest of the class
Skills/knowledge you'll gain: Movement, collaboration
Length: 1-4 hours

Curriculum aligns to:
- NGSS Engineering standards
- ISTE standards
- Common Core ELA/Literacy standards
- Also maps to CSTA standards

Description: AI can create realistic-looking images and videos that were never actually filmed or taken as a photo. These images and videos are called deepfakes. This is a quick lesson requiring no background where students learn about deepfakes, as well as ways to verify information that they see
Skills/knowledge you'll gain: Critical thinking
Length: 1 hour

Curriculum aligns to:
- NGSS Engineering standards
- ISTE standards
- Common Core ELA/Literacy standards
- Also maps to CSTA standards

Description: A quick and fun way to become familiar with some core ideas of modern AI while playing with Google Quick, Draw
Skills/knowledge you'll gain: Understanding of what AI is, privacy and bias concerns
Length: 1 hour

Curriculum aligns to:
- NGSS Engineering standards
- ISTE standards
- Common Core ELA/Literacy standards
- Also maps to CSTA standards

Description: An interactive deep dive into the sort of ethical concerns that companies creating AI based systems should consider. Students explore these ideas through role-playing running their own companies and making ethical decisions for those companies
Skills/knowledge you'll gain: Human-centered design, ethics
Length: 10 hours

Curriculum aligns to:
- NGSS Engineering standards
- ISTE standards
- Common Core ELA/Literacy standards
- Also maps to CSTA standards

Description: A short deep dive into how facial recognition technology is used, some biases it has, and some ways companies, individuals, and the law are fighting against its use in surveillance
Skills/knowledge you'll gain: Ethics
Length: 1 hour

Curriculum aligns to:
- NGSS Engineering standards
- ISTE standards
- Common Core ELA/Literacy standards
- Also maps to CSTA standards

Description: Learn how conservationists use AI image recognition to save time identifying how and where to protect endangered species. Build your own species-identifying AI system
Skills/knowledge you'll gain: Conservation
Length: 1-2 hours

Curriculum aligns to:
- NGSS Engineering standards
- ISTE standards
- Common Core ELA/Literacy standards
- Also maps to CSTA standards

Overview of what the Alternative Minimum Tax is and its purpose. Created by Sal Khan.

In this video David quickly explains each charge and circuit concept and does a sample question for each one. Created by David SantoPietro.

In this video David rapidly explains all the concepts in 1D motion and also quickly solves a sample problem for each concept. Keep an eye on the side scroll see how far along you've made it in the review video. Created by David SantoPietro.

In this video David quickly explains each 2D motion concept and does a quick example problem for each concept. Keep an eye on the scroll to the right to see where you are in the review. Created by David SantoPietro.

In this video David explains each concept for centripetal motion and solves an example problem for each concept. Created by David SantoPietro.

In this video David explains the concepts in Work and Energy and does an example problem for each concept. Link for document: https://www.dropbox.com/s/t1w6xlnkozzel17/Energy%20review.pdf?dl=0. Created by David SantoPietro.

In this video David quickly explains each concept behind Forces and Newton's Laws and does a sample problem for each concept. Keep an eye on the scroll to the right to see how far along you've made it in the review. Created by David SantoPietro.