A couple of weeks ago one of the most popular posts of the week was A Cute Series of Videos About Engineering. That post was about a SciShow Kids series containing a lesson about what engineers do and two lessons about using engineering to solve problems. This week SciShow Kids released a new video that makes for a great follow-up to the series about engineering. 

Solving Problems With Simple Machines is a compilation of a few videos from a few years back. The segments of the video explain what simple machines are and give examples of using simple machines like levers, pulleys, axles, and wheels. 

Applications for Education

Before showing the video to students I would ask them to answer a question like, “what is a machine?” or “what do you think machines do?” Then after watching the video I’d follow-up with a question along the lines of, “can you think of other examples of simple machines?” before moving on to having students build simple machines like those found in Exploratorium’s Science Snacks.