Designing an Energy-Plus House

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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:

  1. Evaluate a design solution using the given criteria and constraints
  2. Collect evidence of the design performance using computer simulations
  3. Improve the design performance through iterations
  4. Create a design that meets the given criteria and constraints
  5. Explain the choice of design variables using scientific principles

Student Documents

Energy-Plus House Design Worksheets

Teacher Guides

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.

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