The Engineering Pathway Portal to the National Science Digital Library (NSDL) launched this week. The portal provides high-quality teaching and learning resources in applied science and math, engineering, computer science/information technology and engineering technology — for use by K-12 and university educators. The Engineering Pathway brings together quality engineering education materials from all over the internet allowing teachers to search all of these documents in a single location.

This month's lesson and activity provide students with the opportunity to explore the concepts of momentum through sports. Specifically, the Collisions and Momentum lesson and associated Bouncing Balls activity ask students to examine the properties of balls used in various athletic events to determine why they are designed as they are. Balls collide all the time in sports. Basketballs bounce. The cue ball collides with other balls on the pool table. The baseball collides with the bat. The head of a golf club hits a golf ball. The students will look at how different balls are designed to create more elastic and less elastic collisions in different sports.

This lesson is described as a lesson for grades 6 through 8, but an important part of many documents in the TeachEngineering Digital Library is the activity extensions heading near the bottom of the activity, providing teachers with ways to make the activity harder or easier for different grade levels. In this case, students could be asked to individually calculate the momentum of each ball in the final assessment to make the assignment more challenging for older students.

This lesson is brought to you by the new Engineering Pathway, a part of the National Science Digital Library.