Man, STEM is fun! Today, the boys all went out in the bitter cold to launch their hand-made rockets at Tuft’s Field. As you can see in the photos, it was a blast (pun wholly intended) for everyone! The wind cooperated nicely, and we had some terrific fun with the launches. There were a couple of malfunctions (i.e. destroyed rockets), but it was all in the name of science! We had a total of 3 launching pads setup, so we were able to get through the initial launches pretty quickly.
For what it’s worth, we were “officially” learning about Newton’s Third Law of Motion, which states, basically, that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. One of the ignition systems was hobbled together with some basic electric parts, too – so we got a chance to talk about electrical circuits in the midst of all the “controlled explosions!”
One of the highlights of the day was Wesley’s rocket, which went straight up, and incredibly, straight down! Its chute didn’t deploy properly, so it fell quickly, and embedded itself in the ground about 4 feet from its launch point. Talk about accuracy!
After everyone had a chance to fire-off their rockets, we ended up sending some of them back up with some very overpowered engines. Those launches were, quite literally, out-of-sight! We ended up staying well past the official 3:30pm ending, but I’m sure the boys will have some great memories of today!
By the way, there’s a picture of a really neat field trip the boys took, to Metso Automation in Shrewsbury. Mr. Bayreuther gave the boys a terrific tour of the facilities, and demonstrated some very cool machinery. They got to see, close-up, the effects that liquid nitrogen has on some objects like rubber balls and balloons.
Here are a few of the photos:
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