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Tommy Myers, Thomas Mellma and Nick McCaw pose
with their finished Phillies rocket and its blueprint.
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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.
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The class is busy designing and building their soda bottle
rockets.
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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.
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Students
examine astronaut gear.
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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.
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Campers bite into freeze
dried astronaut ice cream.
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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 7th-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.
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Another view of the astronaut
gear.
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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.
