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Tangible Resources
Materials: balloons, skewers, straws, rubber bands, paper, card, board, craft materials. Equipment: scissors, glue, tape, ruler, pencil, painter's tape, duct tape, Alka Seltzer effervescent tablets, tubes, water, device for recording video (optional: craft knife, glue gun, drawing compass).
Preparation
Build examples to improve your own understanding of potential issues for the students, prepare materials, and set-up launch areas (inside/outside).
Goals, messages & concepts
Specific goals
- To understand the impact of air pressure on the movement of a rocket.
- To experiment with different rocket designs to achieve the highest flight.
Specific messages
- Air pressure is a strong force.
- The design of the rocket influences its flight.
- By trying different designs, you can improve the performance of your rocket.
- Failure is a valuable part of the experimentation process and improves understanding.
Main terms
- air pressure
- aerodynamics
Practices & skills
STEM practices
- Constructing explanations and designing solutions
- Engaging in argument from evidence
- Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information
- Asking questions and defining problems
- Planning and carrying out investigations
Soft skills
- Dealing with uncertainty
- Learning failure is a part of learning
- Teamwork and collaboration
Management skills
- Planning
- Use of resources
Course of activity
step 1
Give a presentation about building a rocket, factors to take into account (weight, aerodynamics, stability before launch). Then provide information about air pressure and a demonstration of building air pressure using an effervescent tablet.
step 2
Students will then learn about the importance of constants in scientific research: equal number of tablets, equal amount of water, equal size of container, equal rotations or ‘shakes’ of the combined solution.
step 3
Demonstrate how to create pressure in a tube by combining the Alka Seltzer effervescent tablet with water.
step 4
The challenge is to build a rocket with the materials provided. Students should think about the previous assignment when building the car “less is more”, it needs to fly so don’t make it too heavy.
- Students then start by sketching ideas on paper to develop their thoughts independently.
- Show and discuss the materials available to make the rockets. What is it? More importantly, what can it be? (Don’t hand them out yet).
- In pairs, students will discuss sketches and combine designs, producing one joint design on paper. They then make a list of the materials needed and steps to take to make their design.
- Recap health and safety considerations for equipment such as hot glue and craft knives.
step 5
They will start building their rocket, learning through trial and error
- Predict what will happen and state why.
- Test the design scientifically, maintaining constants.
- Note what actually happened and analyse – why did this happen? Did it perform as predicted?
- Continue to adjust the design to improve it as a result of testing, test again and improve (iterative design).
step 6
Stop work for a plenary - each group shows where they are in the process and share their design and teach each other what they have learnt, before giving each other feedback, comments and tips.
step 7
Students will carry out final adjustments based on their feedback.
step 8
They will test the final design with a demonstration outside. They can use 2 tablets to make it a challenge: which rocket goes highest? Measure it with a metre rule. Make a video of the launches (for presentation purposes at the end of the Learning Scenario).
step 9
Presenting the design, each group should show how it’s made, how it works, what materials they used, what choices they made, what problems they had to solve. As students don’t always understand all the skills they have used to accomplish the assignment, name the skills they used explicitly and give positive feedback.