STEM: “The Green Thing”

We recently spent the day building and launching rockets at the Millard Oakley STEM Center with our homeschool co-op. STEM stands for: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. It was quite a day to remember!

Building A Rocket!

Aja started building his rocket before I could start taking pictures. By the time I took the first picture he was almost done building it.

Aja…cutting out wings to add to his rocket.

The wings are on…now for the naming. The rocket’s moniker? “The Green Thing.”

Check it out…such concentration from my wiggle worm!

Pressure is pumped to 30 PSI. T-minus 1 and ready for launch!

And…we have liftoff! Look at that face filled with awe and amazement!

3…2…1…Lift Off!

The parking lot was marked off in meters in increments of 5. Aja’s rocket went past the last mark of 40 meters by about 5 meters or so. It went the furthest of all the rockets in round 1!  Go Aja!

Virtual Lift Off

After everyone had launched their rocket we took a break from rocket building to go on an amazing virtual tour of the universe! The tour took us out to the farthest reaches of the stars. We learned about what we can find in the universe and got a little perspective about our place in it. Our group asked such excellent questions and interacted well with our tour guide! It was wonderful to see learning connections being made!

Round 2

After our tour, we went back to the workshop. After learning a bit about Newton’s Law of Motion, and wing design, the children started back to work on their rockets. The idea was to make one adjustment to their rockets to help improve performance. Aja wasn’t sure what to do to since his went the farthest. He decided to reshape the wings in hopes that it would go even further. In hopes of being able to help his rocket withstand more launch pressure, he also added a bit more weight and reinforcement to his rocket with tape.. (I know, I know! They said make one change…but my son…) LOL 

The design changes he made to his rocket did not help improve performance at all.

1st try: 40 PSI, 13 Meters
2nd try:40 PSI, 23 Meters
3rd try: 60 PSI, 30 Meters

You can watch these three tries in the video below.

Try as he might, Aja couldn’t get his rocket to go as far as it did in the first round. However, we did observe the changes other children made to their rockets. We had fun learning how each design change made the rocket react differently. One such adjustment was the placement of extra wings on some of the rockets. This caused the very cool spiral effect!

Overall…

We had fantabulous day of hands on learning as well as a wonderful experience in physics. STEM inspired us to make our own rocket launchers so we can learn more at our own pace. We hope to visit the STEM Center again very soon!

Science is one of our favorite subjects. I’m excited to have found Science Sunday.

This is my first time participating. If you’d like to check out what other kids learned about in Science this week just click on the Science Sunday link to the left. I’m looking forward to doing so!