Purdue University TRAILS

TRAILS 2.0 offers a place-based learning context that enables students to explore their local environment and connect with STEM professionals from their region.

TRAILS Lesson Plans

Nature’s Origami

Lesson focuses on teams of students using nature-derived inspiration to design a functioning solar panel that can charge a cell phone. Students study the need for renewable energy production and use knowledge of folding patterns in nature to create their

Animal Armor

Students study different types of arthropods and design 3D printed body armor for stuffed animals based on exoskeletons. Students will present the 3D product with a tri-fold at the student art show.

Clean Sweep

Students will describe and illustrate the feeding relationships of aquatic food webs. They will communicate environmental issues of plastic pollution in marine habitats in a mass media format. They will predict buoyancy of an object using mathematics and predictive analysis.

Bumblebot: Engineering a Pollination Solution

Students will model photosynthesis and energy transfer, examine human influence on pollinators, and learn bee behavior in order to understand why pollination is important to ecology and food production. Through the design process, using biomimicry and 3D printers, students will

Engineering Design

Biomimicry

Scientific Inquiry

3D Printing

Place-based STEM Education

TRAILS 2.0 offers a place-based learning context that enables students to explore their local environment and connect with STEM professionals from their region.

TRAILS Lesson Plans

Fishing Lure Design Contest

Communication

Campus

Information

Other