Middle school students are the BEST because they have so many questions, especially when it comes to space. My 8th grade students come from diverse backgrounds. In any given class, we have mainstream students working alongside English learners, special needs students, GATE students, and Honors students.
We have all had teachers that "drone on" in a bad way; help me to "drone on" in a cool way.
Through hands-on experiences like this project, I strive to engage them in continuous wonder about the world around them, to the stars and beyond. We introduce every unit with a phenomenon that gets them hooked and eager to learn the science behind it. Students take on the roles of engineers who identify problems, plan ways to solve those problems, test them out, and evaluate their results to make improvements. For this project, students are investigating the phenomenon of landing the NASA-JPL Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars during the “Seven Minutes of Terror.”
My Project
President John F. Kennedy said, “We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.”
The topic of space exploration intrigues students the most.
Eighth graders learn how forces affect the motion of objects and how energy is neither created nor destroyed. They conduct investigations along the way, from testing how objects of varying masses affect the “tablecloth pull” trick to testing factors that affect the diameter of craters. Their “Force and Motion” unit culminates with the “Mission to Mars” project where students design and build their own landing device that protects a raw egg while falling from the sky. The project concludes with students developing a marketing presentation to present to business professionals we recruit from the aerospace industry with the goal of “selling” them their product similar to the TV show “Shark Tank.” They leave this project with valuable real-life interview skills.
Until now, students have placed their landing devices into water rockets and launched them, however this posed problems with equipment failure, rockets not reaching consistent heights, and faulty altimeter readings, resulting in frustration and misinformation. Our eighth grade team wants to bring this project into the future by using a drone to lift their landers to a set height and dropping them with a remote release clip. We want to make sure this drone is well-protected from dust and the elements when we are transporting it to the blacktop and when it is not in use. Additionally, each battery will last for one period, and we have seven periods of flights we need to get through, so the spare batteries will help us conduct flights all day without interruption.
HUL Premium Aluminium Carrying Case for DJI Phantom 3 Standard / SE / Professional / Advanced / 4K / Phantom 4 / Phantom 4 Pro Drones
• Amazon Business
$64.99
1
$64.99
Materials cost
$286.98
Vendor shipping charges
FREE
Sales tax
$26.26
3rd party payment processing fee
$4.30
Fulfillment labor & materials
$30.00
Total project cost
$347.54
Suggested donation to help DonorsChoose reach more classrooms
$61.33
Total project goal
$408.87
How we calculate what's needed
Total project goal
$408.87
9 Donors
-$286.00
Donations toward project cost
-$245.35
Donations to help DonorsChoose reach more classrooms
-$40.65
match offer
-$120.24
Match offer toward project cost
-$102.20
Match offer to help DonorsChoose reach more classrooms
DonorsChoose is the most trusted classroom funding site for teachers.
As a teacher-founded nonprofit, we're trusted by thousands of teachers and supporters across the country. This classroom request for funding was created by Mrs. Chapluk and reviewed by the DonorsChoose team.
