In Your Classroom: "Space Junkyard"

by Brian McCombs     Department: In Your Classroom

In watching this video, I thought of the wonderful engineering that goes on in constructing many things.  Seeing the junk yard and the materials NASA is trying use to replicate or mimic the Saturn rocket, made me think of the movie "Apollo 13" when the engineering leader brought in the square piece of piping, told his staff they had to make it fit into a round hole, and gave them all the items they had to use.  This is the essence of engineering to me.  Create what you want to create, but only using a limited amount of "stuff" or money.

A project we do on the first day of school really gets my students' minds working and we have a lot of fun with it, too.  It's called the Barbie Bungee Jump.  I used to use raw eggs in a handmade sack, but it got too messy.  I've found that the dolls work well and are fun, too.  To do this you need a lot of rubber bands, toy dolls (or anything that you feel you'd like to drop on a bungee cord), measuring devices (meter stick, ruler, tape measure), and a calculator.  Students attach a rubber band to the doll, and then loop several more rubber bands together and attach them to the band with the doll.  They then do sample drops of Barbie, determining the distance she falls, related to the number of rubber bands used.  Each group needs to find several (7-10) distance/rubber band data points.  This gets trickier for kids to find distances as the number of bands increase.  They get very creative in finding methods of measuring these distances.  They enter in the data into their calculator and determine a Linear Regression that fits best.  (It's amazing, with all the physics going on, how linear the relationship really is.)  On the final day of the activity, students draw a random number out of a hat.  This number corresponds with a step number of our football stadium.  The kids need to predict the number of rubber bands required to give Barbie a safe, yet thrilling ride.  We have a lot of fun with this, and the kids all do quite well.

Another related project is the Egg Drop Project.  Done mostly in physics classes, it could also be a fun activity to relate to mathematics.  There are several websites detailing the specifics of this project.  There is one that I have found which has several photos and a complete explanation of the activity.  It has a lot of great engineering concepts within it as well.  Posted below is a video clip of an egg drop activity.

In my classes, we also do a rocket launch project.  We use 35mm film canisters (you need the ones that don't have a lip around the lid), Alka-Seltzer, water, and a stopwatch for the activity.  Students fill the canister about ¼ full with water, place about a quarter of a tablet in the water, seal the lid, turn the canister on it's top, and wait.  They need to record the time it takes from the "Pop" of the canister to when it hits the ground.  After repeating this several times, each group chooses their best launch.  Using the equation for displacement (or in math texts - projectile motion: -4.9t2 + vot + ho) and the time the canister was in the air, the groups are able to determine the height it reached, the initial velocity, and the velocity at any given point during the flight.  While a very simple project, it teaches some of the graphing calculators capabilities, and reinforces the concepts of maximum, projectile motion, and derivative.  A video of a "rocket" launch is posted below.

I found a great book online dealing with rocket building and uses for school projects.  It is called 50 Model Rocket Projects for the Evil Genius.  It has received terrific reviews and looks applicable to both the mathematics and science fields.  Many times throughout the school year, especially in my upper-level courses, I will have students ask me about the field of engineering and I direct them to this informative website on UniXL.  Students want to know what it entails, what the different types are, and what I think they would be good at.  This site gives a brief explanation of several fields of engineering, the mathematics and science required for each, and possible responsibilities/jobs each field would deal with.  It also has several links within the site that direct the student and the teacher to engineering websites, project sites, etc.  My kids find it is a worthwhile site.

For students who are looking to go a step further in looking at rocketry, mathematics, and how they are intertwined, go to the PBS website, DragonflyTV.  It is about a couple of young ladies who went to a space camp and learned the intricacies of rocket building.  The site details several things they have tried to measure using model rockets, and gives suggestions to other students about investigations they can do as well.  It has videos, links, ideas, riddles, etc. and will maybe be a starting block for your students who want to try going a little further with rocketry than you have class time for.  It could help to create a great independent study project.

If you have any suggestions about using rocketry or engineering in the math classroom, please post them below.

Additional WIRED Science Video Segments
Don't forget to check out our Video Section for other segments from WIRED Science that you can use in your classroom.

Tags:

+ Add Comment

Post your comment

Name
Email Address
URL

Remember personal info?

Captcha:

Type the characters you see in the picture above.