The Cushman School — Miami, FL
PLTW POE — a hands-on survey of engineering systems, from statics and energy to circuits and control. Students analyze, build, and test real mechanisms across multiple engineering domains.
Overview
Principles of Engineering is a broad, project-based survey course that exposes students to the major branches of engineering: mechanical, civil, electrical, and control systems. Students don't just learn concepts — they apply them through lab work, testing, and design challenges using professional tools and instruments.
The course builds quantitative reasoning through experimentation. Students collect real data, analyze forces, build working circuits, and program control systems. By the end, they have a grounded understanding of how engineered systems actually behave — not just how they're supposed to work in theory.
Curriculum
Unit 1
Forces, moments, free body diagrams, mechanical advantage, and static equilibrium.
Unit 2
Work, kinetic and potential energy, energy conversion, power, and efficiency measurement.
Unit 3
Stress, strain, tensile and compressive testing, material selection, and structural analysis.
Unit 4
Ohm's Law, series and parallel circuits, breadboarding, and circuit analysis with meters.
Unit 5
Sensors, actuators, feedback loops, and programming automated systems with Arduino or VEX.
Unit 6
Hydraulics and pneumatics: pressure, force, Pascal's Law, and system design.
Unit 7
Capstone project requiring students to draw on multiple domains to solve a complex problem.
Resources