NGSS Engineering: High School

In this guide, you will:

• Get to know the high school (grades 9-12) Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) for engineering.
• See examples of how the standards relate to real-world engineering at NASA JPL, and meet the engineers leading these exciting missions and projects to explore Earth and space.
• Find standards-aligned lesson plans and student projects you can deploy in the classroom to engage students in learning with NASA.

The Next Generation Science Standards for engineering fit within the Engineering, Technology and Applications of Science (ETS) Disciplinary Core Idea. Each NGSS standard addresses one of the subsections of the ETS Disciplinary Core Ideas:

• Defining and Delimiting Engineering Problems – What is a design for, and what are the criteria and constraints of a successful solution?
• Developing Possible Solutions – What is the process for developing potential design solutions?
• Optimizing the Design Solution – How can the various design solutions be compared and improved?

These ideas make up the essential elements of the engineering design process, a process by which engineers identify a problem, design and build a solution, test the solution, and improve on their design.

Disciplinary Core Idea: Defining and Delimiting Engineering Problems

Definition: Analyze a major global challenge to specify qualitative and quantitative criteria and constraints for solutions that account for societal needs and wants.

How it's used at NASA JPL: To affect a groundwater cleanup project guided by the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act (CERCLA) of 1980, NASA had to study and define the problem before they could move forward with developing solutions for cleanup.

According to Groundwater Cleanup Project Manager Steve Slaten, “NASA is responsible for a large-scale groundwater cleanup that is a result of past waste disposal practices that go back to World War II when the Army was operating JPL and developing rockets for the military. Liquid wastes – everything from toilets, to the analytical labs, chemicals, cleaning solvents and a component of rocket propellant called perchlorate – are now in the deep ground water. It’s very important that we clean up this problem so that our neighbors have access to this resource.”

Use it in the classroom: Challenge your students to model the processes NASA used to define cleanup criteria for polluted groundwater. They can then proceed with designing and implementing a filtration system much like the engineering teams working on JPL’s groundwater cleanup project.

Expand on the standard: Global problems, such as drought and water shortages, a need for clean energy, climate change, and sea level rise can have regional impacts and demand local solutions.

Students in high school will define criteria in quantifiable ways that will require that students conduct measurements, and qualitative ways that will allow students to assess other aspects of design success such as community attitudes or social responses.

Additionally, students will identify the limiting constraints a solution must meet, including cost, size, weight and performance, as well as a fit within society.

Disciplinary Core Idea: Developing Possible Solutions

Definition: Design a solution to a complex real-world problem by breaking it down into smaller, more manageable problems that can be solved through engineering.

How it's used at NASA JPL: The sun is an excellent source of energy, but to efficiently harness that power is a complex problem. Solar power towers that use concentrators, or reflectors, to send sunlight to a central tower can be very costly.

Dr. Gani Ganapathi, a chemical engineer who leads the Thermal Propulsion and Materials group at JPL, is working on bringing those costs down. Lowering the cost of solar concentrators in a process that involves breaking down the problem into manageable pieces that can be solved through engineering. Ganapathi explains, “Most people are familiar with solar photovoltaic, but solar thermal is a very strong alternate technology where potential for generating power continually exists.”

Use it in the classroom: From NASA data to application, students assess local light conditions that will determine the placement and capacity of solar panels by breaking the complex issue of switching to cleaner energy into smaller, more manageable components, such as cost considerations and solar power location selection.

Expand on the standard: Building on practices developed in earlier years students will gather information from multiple, independent sources, as well as draw on their own knowledge of scientific principles prior to brainstorming solutions.

Due to the complexity of problems, as well as solutions, designs and the criteria for determining the success of a solution may need to be broken down into smaller, more manageable parts that can be systematically tested. This might mean that student teams look at individual components of a larger solution and work to improve that particular element. Students may have to consider prioritizing criteria and making trade-offs in their designs.

Examples of trade-offs might include reducing weight by using a lighter, but less strong material, or using a more costly component that impacts the budget available for another component.

Disciplinary Core Idea: Optimizing the Design Solution

Definitions:

• HS-ETS1-3: Evaluate a solution to a complex real-world problem based on prioritized criteria and trade-offs that account for a range of constraints, including cost, safety, reliability, and aesthetics as well as possible social, cultural, and environmental impacts.
• HS-ETS1-4: Use a computer simulation to model the impact of proposed solutions to a complex real-world problem with numerous criteria and constraints on interactions within and between systems relevant to the problem.

How they're used at NASA JPL: Designing spacecraft involves prioritizing criteria and making trade-offs based on environmental and resource constraints faced by engineers. NASA has been exploring Mars since the early 1960s and developing those missions is no small task, taking many years and thousands of people working together to complete.

Dr. Sarah Milkovich, a science system engineer, says, “One important aspect of system engineering is to think about what do you really need your system do to before you figure out how it’s going to do that.”

Use them in the classroom: Students simulate JPL mission design by bringing all aspects of a mission to fruition, mirroring the challenges facing JPL engineers. Students must stay within budget, as well as mass and energy limitations, while accomplishing the most science possible, examining tradeoffs and making sacrifices along the way.

Expand on the standards:

• HS-ETS1-3: Complex real-world problems will often lead to design solutions with many criteria for success. As students learned in earlier grades, multiple designs may all have the desired qualities of a solution. However, the goal of engineering is not to simply design a solution, but to design the best solution. Students will take a systematic approach to evaluating the multiple criteria of a solution. This may include a scoring system used to rate performance toward certain criteria. Students will likely have to make compromises when evaluating against the constraints of their design – a heavier, sturdier material may be stronger, but it can also drive up costs and mass. Iterative testing – the repeated process of modeling, testing, analyzing, refining, and retesting – will lead to an improved design.
• HS-ETS1-4: In addition to physical models, computer simulations can assist in the visualizing, testing and evaluating of a design solution. Computer simulations can involve using computer-aided-design and computer-aided-manufacturing software (CAD and CAM) to create and modify designs, programming an app to model various inputs on a design, inputting data into a spreadsheet to calculate and graph the costs of competing designs, and using presentation software to explain the effectiveness of a certain design. Students will use these tools to predict how a particular solution will affect different elements of a problem.