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IN THE NEWS:
| April,
2007:
Local
seventh and eighth grade students won first place prizes in an
inventions contest sponsored by NASA.
The Crater Crawler doesn't look like a big deal at first: all aluminum foil and toy parts and duct tape. But it does a lot more than just bop around on plastic wheels. Using a special winch at it's rear, it can grab the rim of an incline and pull itself out of a hole. The perfect design for a moon rover. "It's designed to drill mining holes for oxygen," says eighth grader Lindsay Patkos, "and be able to pull itself out of a crater, powered by solar energy." The Crawler was designed and built by the seventh and eighth graders of Jeannine Dunn and Julie Cook of the Souderton Charter School Collaborative in Souderton, Montgomery County. The contraptions were the school's entries in this year's National Space Day competition, sponsored by NASA. The little rover, along with a device the kids call the multi-use space tool or M.U.S.T., both won first place prizes in the contest: the first time a single middle school has been so honored. "We participated in the...contest and we had two groups that actually won in their division," says science teacher Dunn. "Our rover group actually won for best over all. And we had our tool design group which actually won for most creative design." That design is the M.U.S.T.; a batch of PVC pipe and wire that allows an astronaut in flight to generate electricity while riding a stationary bicycle. That power is used to juice up both an iPod and a Palm Pilot. The teams won $2000 for expenses to travel to Washington, where they will attend a special luncheon in their honor. The kids will also tour the Capitol and even get to meet some real astronauts. The student inventors take their trip in May. Over 200 schools participated in the national competition.
|
March,
2007: These kids are a little spacey, but definitely in a good way By: Patrick Cobbs, Staff writer 03/28/2007 The Cranky Earthlings and the Rover Rangers of the Souderton Charter School Collaborative started their NASA designs with an emergency radio from Radio Shack and Batman's famous grappling hook, and they wound up with a pair of award winning prototypes.
"We do a lot of project work here, that's our whole thing - experiential learning, so this project fits in great with our philosophy," she said. In the course of following an inquiry based curriculum to build a lunar rover or a space tool, Dunn said, the classes can easily cover the gamut of school subjects: math, physics, history (think the 50th anniversary of Sputnik this year), writing, and even Greek mythology. So, since the seventh and eight graders spent about five hours a week for the last four months working on their two projects from some angle, maybe it isn't surprising that they rose to be among the top 22 of the 178 teams that participated from all over the country. It's just this kind of whole project approach that aeronautical and defense contractor Lockheed Martin wants to encourage. It is why the company will invite the two Souderton teams to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum to this May to discuss their inventions and to meet scientists and astronauts. In fact, the whole motivation for designing the national project was to spark kids' interests in science, technical thinking, math and engineering, according to project organizer Kay Armstrong. "It's a great way for them to learn and enjoy their learning and they often come back with, 'Wow! Can we do it again,' and often not even realizing that they are employing science and math and pre-engineering concepts," she said. A chat with any team member contradicts some of what Armstrong said, however. These kids definitely knew what they were doing. Take the seventh graders, the Cranky Earthlings. Their task was to design a tool for the average astronaut. They came up with the M.U.S.T. (multi-use space tool) and won Most Creative Design for their efforts. It uses kinetic energy to power a series of accessories. "When you pedal it, it powers the palm pilot, the Ipod and the flashlight," Kelsey Dierkes said. The gold and black T-shaped contraption sprung from the realization that people living in space can't slack off on staying in shape - their very health depends on it. "If they don't, they start to lose muscle mass because they're not used to being up there for so long," said Erica Woodward. It started with a simple crank radio, a donated base made from painted plywood and some donated bike parts from Scooters. Then after a few trips to the Home Depot for PVC piping, consultations with an electrician and a little gold paint it became both an exercise machine and an energy generating unit that really works. Jacob Guttenplan recalled how they broke three motors in the design process and explained how it works. The pedal cranks go through gearing to rapidly speed up the rotation of a metal disk around a magnet, which sends current up through wires fishing through the T and to each of its modular attachments, he said. But what of these attachments? They come from the very practical realization that working out isn't always fun. So the students thought any MUST users should have a few stimulating necessities at the ready, especially an Ipod. "We read that the astronauts get bored and they need motivation for exercise and it could hold pictures and a lot of music," Alex Reidnauer explained. The eighth grade Rover Rangers were equally impressive. Their remote-controlled lunar explorer tries to account for all the major design challenges a Moon mission presents. Even the choice of the Moon as a target was based on the finding that NASA wants to return there in the next 20 years. They did pretty well in the top grade level, winning Best Overall for their Repelling Crater Crawler design. Or, as team member Jacob Cook preferred to put it, "We won the whole thing." At its base, the rover is a stripped down remote-controlled car that can be driven from a Moon Lander or Cape Canaveral, in theory - as long as they land on the bright side of the Moon so radio waves are not obstructed, Lydia Sine explained. Other design features included a working drill for mineral samples, storage areas inside the belly of the beast and on its back, two claw like apertures that, in a full scale mock-up (this one is one third the proposed size), would also be remotely controlled; foil sheathing to reflect all the potentially damaging radiation in space and photo-voltaic panels for battery recharge. Even the team's design failures became positives as it experimented with different methods of gaining traction in a sand box, meant to simulate the dusty surface of the moon. One of those attempts - a set of paperclip tire chains - might merit more looking into, the designers said, but not in their scope of work. The biggest innovation, and the one most team members think caught the judge's fancy, was the addition of a working grappling hook and winch that the students constructed to help the crawler negotiate the many craters that cover the lunar surface. "Eighty percent of the moon is covered in craters and it's dangerous because the rovers that they send up there are really expensive," explained Lindsey Patkos. The team tested this feature literally from all angles, using the side of a refrigerator box to simulate a crater wall. It perfected the design of both the hook, made from fishing gear, and the winch, made from two electric motors geared to work in concert for more power. They tested the vehicle so much that at present, unfortunately, it no longer works. It fell and cracked its main circuit board. "It was going up on an incline and I was actually controlling it," Lindsey confessed, when it slipped and tumbled to the ground. Even this mishap highlighted the important design need for a shock absorbing system to encase the circuit board, the students said. It may be that willingness to learn from every turn of events that persuaded the judges to salute the Rover Rangers' work. Or it could be the willingness to take inspiration from all sources - like the Caped Crusader's famous grapple and tether that helps him scale buildings. Whatever the reason one thing is clear. When the teams travel to the nation's capital in May, they will be meeting the astronauts and scientists assembled there to greet them with the kind of experience that could one day make them not just students, but colleagues. ©Montgomery Newspapers 2007 |
