NASA Comes to Octorara

Tommy Myers, Thomas Mellma and Nick McCaw pose with their finished Phillies rocket and its blueprint.

By Magdalena Stuehrmann

Watch out, unwary wanderers! The open fields behind the Octorara Intermediate Unit have been transformed into a NASA-worthy launch pad! 

No manned spaceflights or payloads for the International Space Station will be leaving this pad, however, nor are the members of mission control NASA employees.

Instead, the launch pad behind the school is seeing use by water bottle rockets and air powered rockets, their launches engineered and carried out by a group of bright, enthusiastic youngsters at a summer camp.

The class is busy designing and building their soda bottle rockets.

NASA has been in the news quite often recently with the ending of the space shuttle program. Public opinion in general seems to be that NASA is slipping a bit. This summer camp, however, shows otherwise.

The Summer of Innovation camp at Octorara, funded by a grant whose partners are NASA, the Chester County Intermediate Unit and Immaculata University is one of 36 sites where the camp is being held this summer in the region.

The program, now in its second year, is designed to excite young students about math and science during a fun, hands-on summer experience. 

The hope is that students will retain more knowledge over the summer months from the previous school year, and that they will enter the new year with more enthusiasm for math and science. In the long-term, the program’s founders hope to inspire generations of students to enter math and science related fields, possibly even working for NASA in the future. 

Students examine astronaut gear.

The Summer of Innovation camp this year at Octorara has been a huge hit, for both the teachers and the students involved. This free, weeklong day camp, led by Mr. David Baker and Ms. Amanda Lenton, both teachers at Octorara, features both lessons and activities in the areas of Earth sciences, aeronautics, rocketry, robotics and space science. 

The materials for the lessons and activities were provided free to the instructors because of the generous grant for the program, as was the training both instructors received at the Goddard Institute and Immaculata University.

The camp instructors were also provided with instructions for the projects and other suggestions to help them run the camp smoothly. Though all this planning and training have taken place, this is the first time that Mr. Baker has been an instructor for the camp, so, he says, “everything’s been a little trial and error.” This fact, however, seems to make little difference to the children involved. 

From day one, the students at the Octorara camp have been kept busy, doing hands-on work applying the principles and ideas from their lessons to real-life projects. During their time working on Earth science this Monday, the students built clay volcanoes with baking soda and vinegar eruptions, and measured the simulated lava flows of each. 

Campers bite into freeze dried astronaut ice cream.

They also took core samples of the volcanoes from the volcanoes with straws to figure out the order of the layers. This hands-on activity was soon-to-be 7^th-grader Emily Bright’s favorite activity. 

“It’s a lot of fun,” said Ms. Bright, about the program, even with the lessons and note taking. She also enjoyed learning about various wing designs for airplanes and testing her own. 

Another young rocketeer, Ms. Hannah Unitis, said that her favorite part of the camp had been designing, building and testing paper airplanes. Ms. Unitis was looking forward to fixing and practicing with her brush both, a simple type of robot each member of the class had created using a motor, battery and a toothbrush head, and were scheduled to test and battle later in the week. 

Though it is summertime, most of the students did not mind the note taking that accompanied the lessons and were enthusiastic about seeing the way that the principles they learned about took shape and came into play during the hands-on portions of the activities.

Wednesday was a day of great excitement for the students and instructors – rocket launch day had arrived! Mr. and Mrs. Riess, the parents of a child in the program, volunteered to give extra help during the building of the soda bottle rockets the students launched later that day. 

The students first learned about Newton’s three laws of motion and Bernoulli’s principle and then began to design the cone and fins for their soda-bottle-fuselaged rockets. Just like NASA rocket scientists, the students drew up detailed, full-scale templates of for their designs to receive approval to build from Mr. Baker. 

While the students were busy drawing, cutting and gluing, Dr. Stan Terzopolos, an associate professor at Immaculata University brought in some astronaut accouterments to share with the students. These included a flight suit and helmet, a glove, a food tray and food, all of which would be used by astronauts on a space mission.

Another young camper, Mr. Jude Unitis, mentioned that his favorite part of the camp thus far had been eating the space food (especially the ice cream!) that had been provided for the students to try. 

Another view of the astronaut gear.

His friend, Mr. Bobby Bright, stated that his favorite activity had been shooting off a test rocket earlier that morning, but that he had also enjoyed seeing Bernoulli’s principle on air and lift in action in an experiment with a sheet of paper. 

Both boys were looking forward to testing their brush bots later and said that they were learning a lot and having lots of fun.

When the students had finished creating and decorating their soda bottle rockets (one notable rocket made by Mr. Tommy Myers, Mr. Thomas Mellma and Mr. Nick McCaw was decorated with Phillies drawings), they were able to investigate the inner workings of old dismantled cell phones and make last minute adjustments to their rockets before launch time. 

Each group of students presented their designs and finished rockets and explained, using the principles they had learned earlier, why they chose each design. 

Then, it was launch time! Weather conditions permitted the launches to begin and Mission Control watched with growing excitement as the first rocket was placed on the launch pad. 

Though getting the right pressure for each launch was difficult to gauge, the experiment went fairly smoothly. 

The young scientists, their experiment completed, turned their minds to upcoming air powered rocket launches, to their brush bots, and to the solar oven they will build on Friday to make s’mores in, immersed in the joys of real science, the promising generation of future innovation.