Current mood:

nervous

Fifth Graders into Space
The fact that I disappear in July for a week and return with some rather odd tales (and many mosquito bites) is well known around my place of employment so when it was decided that the students at one of our charter schools needed a “rocket club” I was put in charge. We got off to a great start by showing “October Sky” and my next session in which I introduced center of gravity VS center of pressure was a smash success. What I had the students do was take a one foot length of pool noodle and launch (throw) it. The kids were divided into groups with each group having a “record keeper”, a “launcher” and a “measurer”. They then launched the noodle as far as they could and recorded the results. I believe the record was nearly 6 feet.

Then I suggested adding fins and the students had a ball putting fins of different sizes at different points alone the length of the noodle. Each time they produced a new design they had to record how far the noodle flew. Not only was this fun but they could see that the best designs had fins in the back. Finally I gave them a large wood screw which they could thread into the noodle at any point they wanted. Most quickly figured out that putting the screw toward the front of the noodle resulted in another increase in range. The record “rocket” flew almost 60 feet. We then had the “recorders” put their data on the white board. What I loved was that the data clearly showed an improvement for each condition (fins better then no fins and fins with screw better then just fins) and more importantly I think most of the kids saw it too.

Now we are starting the construction phase and things are getting stickier. I think my first mistake was trying to have the students build the launcher as well as the rocket. The reason I wanted to give them a complete system was so that they could take it home and be able to launch rockets on their own. Unfortunately I failed the take into account how long this would take… So at this point we have the launcher but haven’t started building the rockets yet. We have just one two hour session left before the launch date and the principle has just sent out press releases, announcements, etc.

Yes you might say I’m a little stressed…