This month's activity discusses engineering of fire protection systems. In Make an Alarm!, students are asked to make their own alarm system for something in the classroom. The activity could incorporate fire protection as its primary motivation by focusing on smoke alarms. The activity is designed for younger students, but simply by changing the materials, it could be used to inspire older students. Bringing basic electricity and a buzzer circuit would make this more exciting for older students. Finally, a discussion of how the sensors in smoke detectors work can be provided at a higher level by utilizing additional material (see How Smoke Detectors Work at howstuffworks.com). After the activity, try having groups of students take apart real home smoke detectors and identifying the sensor and alarm parts of the circuit.

This activity is brought to you by the new Engineering Pathway, a part of the National Science Digital Library. 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 curricular unit is from the TeachEngineering Digital Library for K-12 engineering curricula.