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Arizona STEM

Acceleration Project

Design and Modeling - Soda Straw Rockets Day 2

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Design and Modeling - Soda Straw Rockets Day 2

7th Grade STEM Lesson

Matt Heaston

7/12/2023

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Notes for Teachers

This is part 2 of 2. This lesson takes place in a classroom for approx. 1 hour.
Students may work in small groups of 2-4.
An emphasis on the target product (justifying their root system).
Creative solutions should be encouraged.
Facilitate student reflection on why roots have their structure and how roots function.
This lesson can easily be modified to focus on content standards for 7th and 8th grade.
October Sky is a great movie to create interest, but rated PG-13.
This lesson can be foundational for physics, starting a rocketry club, modeling aeronautics, etc.
Click here for Day 1

List of Materials:

Rocket template
Sheet of paper
tape (clear preferably)
#2 pencil
scissors
measuring tape
notebook/data log

This assignment per JPL asks for nose cone length to be the manipulated variable. This is an excellent start to the iteration process.

My students have developed methods of launching the rockets that are more repeatable than your breath.

These launching devices have been in addition to the rocket assignment, and allowed us to launch the rockets consistently eliminating a possible variable.

Some launching devices have been gravity driven, or pressurized with a bicycle pump. I’ll let your teams figure out the rest :)

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Arizona Science Standards

Science Standards:

7.P3U1.3: Plan and carry out an investigation that can support an evidence-based explanation of how objects on Earth are affected by gravitational force.

7.P3U1.4: Use non-algebraic mathematics and computational thinking to explain Newton’s laws of motion

Science and Engineering Practices:

ask questions and define problems
develop and use models
plan and carry out investigations
analyze and interpret data
use mathematical and computational thinking
construct explanations and design solutions
engage in argument from evidence
obtain, evaluate and communicate information

Arizona ELA Standards

7.RI.1 Cite several pieces of textual evidence to support analysis of what the text says explicitly as well as inferences drawn from the text

7.RI.4 Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone.

7.W.7 Conduct short research projects to answer a question, drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions for further research and investigation.

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Objectives:

Day 1:

We will explain how simple rockets work.

We will conduct short research to answer a question with evidence.

Day 2:

We will collaborate and communicate effectively with our peers to complete a design challenge.

Students will be researching and conducting experiments with nose cones and/or fin shape/size/structure.

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Agenda (55 minutes each)

Day 1:

What is a rocket? What is flight?

Soda Straw Rocket website

Make rockets!

Launch rockets

Day 2:

Modify and improve (engineering process)

Walking gallery

The JPL lab is linked to the title in the slide. This will take the students to a tutorial, which you can either do with them or have them do on their own.

I prefer to have each student make their own rockets, and then if time permits, have more and more iterations by the teams as a competition or gallery. Students are encouraged to make the rockets as fancy as possible without interfering with flight capabilities.

Depending on the launch method, you can launch for accuracy, flight time, distance, height, etc. these all make for great data collection and analysis. Mean median and mode come to mind. The data tables will also provide you with exit ticket questions? ie: in your team who had the farthest launch? what factors contributed to this distance?

This lesson can easily be expanded for multiple sessions as you decide. How many iterations or improvements can the students make to the rocket?

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Review

Students will get very creative at this point. Some will want to build hangars for their rockets, or as I dubbed them, Rocket Pockets. There’s a design lesson there as well; a place to keep the rockets safe as they can be quite delicate.

To keep this simple, once they have achieve success in building the rockets, then it is up to you to have them change some aspect of the build to seek improvements. You can also instruct the teams to focus on individual aspects (team 1 - fins, team 2 length of fuselage, team 3 length of nose cone) to determine the best overall build. This, is all, according to the time you have for this lesson. This part of the lesson is fun, flexible and can last as long as needed.

Competitions for design, function, artistic, etc. can all be rewarded due to the nature of STEAM classes.

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Review - Rocket builds and data collection

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Rocket Design Challenge

Nose cones

Fins

Briefing the Challenge

The nose cone

The first iteration of the nose cone is made by twisting the end of the fuselage around the sharpened point of the pencil and using tap to keep it closed.

Nose cones can also be made by cutting a small circle, roughly the size of a nickel, then cut the a line from the outside of the circle to the radius. This will allow one side of the cut to pass by the other side of the cut creating a cone shape. (think piping bag for frosting). Another method is a half circle, same idea but you end up with less material weighing down the cone - but you can leave this for the students to discover.

Similar changes to the length of the fuselage, nosecones, size and shape of the fins, will affect the flight of the rockets. These can all be done by each team, or as compartmentalized research to determine the best final product.

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Template for cones and fins

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Launching tool for soda straw rocket:

Water bottle

Straw

hot glue gun

drill

~Make a hole in the bottle lid roughly same size as straw diameter.

~Put straw through hole, careful that the straw does not touch the bottom of the bottle.

~Use hot glue to seal straw/bottle lid.

~Secure lid/straw to bottle by tightening cap.

~Place straw rocket over straw.

~Squeeze bottle to launch rocket.

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How do we assess our work?

Walking gallery
We seek feedback
We iterate and repeat

We evaluate our final iteration to see if it meets requirements and stays within constraints.

Assessment: When evaluating or assessing engineering projects we should be looking at the process and the product.

Process

Did the group follow the engineering design process by generating ideas, developing prototypes, testing, and improving?
This can be seen in how the students arrived at constructing the roots, applied them to their sheet, seeking feedback, improving their design.
Allowing the team to self assess will put accountability into the lesson.

Product

Were students able to show improvements in any of the criteria you provided? (flight time, distance, speed, etc.). Remember, failure is learning.
I allow students to make revisions on nearly every assignment, as time permits. In this case I would like to give students time to make changes to their effort to reflect feedback from the gallery or their own observations.

This could be done with a rubric, an oral presentation (explaining their process and product), a visual product (a poster, video clip, etc).

Many of these ideas are outside the timeframe of a single day lesson so this is a good fit for a longer unit of study.

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Assessment

Rocket Boosters!

Does the rocket have all necessary parts?
Are the rocket components properly labelled and understood?
Were you able to improve your rocket?
If yes, what changes did you make that yielded the greatest results?
Self assessment: If you had one more day to build, what would you do first?

ELA Assessment

After reading the articles, were you able to identify and properly label forces acting on the rocket?

Can you cite at least 2 functions the fins and nose cone serve serve?

Describe in detail how you would use this process of design-build-test to help you be better at studying?

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Differentiation

Students can be given pre-made parts and asked to assemble the rocket, or be given completed rockets so that they may participate in the data collection and ideas of improvements.

Students will be working in groups according to teacher selection, lending strengths to weaknesses and vice-versa.

Remediation

Extension/Enrichment

One way to differentiate in this lesson is to ask students if the design is scalable and provide them with paper, but no template. Just a ruler and pencil. Can a rocket carry a payload? Putting weight inside drastically affects flight in interesting ways.

Specific scenarios can be given like needing to transport goods to another planet (desk) so landing becomes necessary.