Designing an Energy-Plus House
A classroom-ready Aladdin design challenge in which students produce three energy-plus designs following the engineering design process.
An energy-plus house is a house that generates more renewable energy than the energy it consumes over the course of a year. In this activity, students are challenged to come up with three different designs for an energy-plus house using Aladdin, following the engineering design process.
After finishing this design challenge, students will be able to:
- Evaluate a design solution using the given criteria and constraints
- Collect evidence of the design performance using computer simulations
- Improve the design performance through iterations
- Create a design that meets the given criteria and constraints
- Explain the choice of design variables using scientific principles
Student Documents
Energy-Plus House Design Worksheets
Teacher Guides
- What affects the building energy use of a house?
- Designing an energy-plus house
- Constructing a house with different architectural styles
- Analyzing the energy performance of complex houses
Lehigh University also made some video tutorials.
Related Educational Standards
The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS): MS-PS3-3, MS-ETS-1, HS-PS3-3, HS-ETS-1
Acknowledgements
The development of this curriculum unit is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant numbers #2131097 and #2301164. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material, however, are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF.
