On Friday, January 16th, 2015, Mableton Elementary's Starbase 1.5 Club blasted off with its first class for lucky 3rd graders! I (Mrs. Davis) am super excited to share this experience with everyone. After many months of planning and getting ready, it is FINALLY here! I picked up the members and headed to the Starbase Lab for a quick meet and greet before jumping right into the day's lesson. The introductory lesson with students dove into the wonderful world of aerospace engineering, and how it relates to the world around us! The students and I read a book about a boy named Paulo who is from Brazil. His parents are aerospace engineers who are working on creating and testing a parachute that will help land a rover safely on another planet for exploration and testing. Pretty cool stuff for parents to do, if I say so myself! Paulo is not happy about his new digs, but he meets a new friend Lucas who convinces him that the new place might not be that bad. Paulo and Lucas decide to pick melons off a tree one day, but they run into a problem. They can't figure out a way to send the melons down without breaking them. So....they get Pualo's parachute that his parents gave him out and figure out a way to rig the parachute so that they can fling the melons down the tree without breaking them on impact.
While reading, the students and I discussed what was happening with the parachute. (drag and gravity) Students were able to simulate air resistance with plastic grocery store bags. I demonstrated for the students by turning around in a circle with my plastic bag and filling the bag with air! Students then took turns dong the same so that they could FEEL the drag when the atmosphere was pushed out of the way of the bag.
After that, we returned to discussing how parachutes work and how Paulo's parents have to think about the atmosphere (air) of the different planets as they work on the design of their models. It was unbelievable how engaged the students were using the vocabulary, and discussing the different aspects of aerospace engineering.
I was sad to see that time was up for our first meeting, and the students did not want to go! I am amazed at what imaginative and intrigued 3rd graders that I am working with, and I can't wait to see what they get into next time!
This week's preview:
Designing a spacecraft to explore another planet
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