Lesson 14: Technology and Engineering
Technology includes tools, processes, and systems developed to solve problems. This lesson covers the engineering design process, animal tool use, and examples of designs inspired by nature.
Key Ideas
- Technology includes tools and ways of doing things that help meet needs or solve problems. A spoon and a computer are both technology.
- Some animals use tools too. People share ideas and build on what earlier generations have learned.
- Engineers solve problems by planning, trying an idea, checking the result, and improving the design.
- People can learn from nature when designing things. The tiny hooks on plant burrs helped inspire hook-and-loop fasteners.
- Living things offer ideas for designs. A bird’s wings or a plant’s seeds can inspire new tools and inventions.
Vocabulary
- Technology: Tools and ways of doing things that help meet needs or solve problems.
- Biomimicry: Learning from nature to design a solution to a problem.
- Engineer: A person who uses science and design to solve problems and meet needs.
- Engineering Design: Planning, testing, and improving a solution to a problem.
- Raw Material: A resource used as the starting material for making something.
- Instinct: A way of behaving an animal is born ready to do. Experience can also affect its behavior.
Discussion Questions
- What makes something “technology”? Is a hammer technology, or is the process of making the hammer also technology? Why?
- Can you think of something you used today and trace it back to a natural resource?
- Animals use tools, too. How is a chimpanzee using a stick to get termites similar to a human using a tool? How is it different?
- Why do you think some animals pass tool-using behaviors from one generation to another?
- How can inherited tendencies, learning, and social transmission contribute to animal behavior? How do people use testing and shared knowledge in engineering?
- Think of a problem you have encountered. How could you use the engineering design process to solve it?
- Why is testing an important part of engineering? What might happen if an engineer never tested their design?
- What is biomimicry? Can you think of something humans could invent by studying an animal, plant, or other part of nature?
- If you could design something by copying nature, what would you study and what problem would you try to solve?
- Your body is constantly building and repairing itself from food, water, and air. What do you think is most amazing about that process? Why do you think humans have such a hard time building technology that can do the same thing?