The St. Joseph’s 5th grade completed a week long Starbase Project NOVA class from September 17-21, culminating with a field trip to the South Dakota Air and Space Museum located next to Ellsworth Air Force Base in Rapid City, SD.
During the week, the students learned about science, technology, engineering and math; all while completing hands-on activities and experiments. Some of the activities were designing a space shuttle seat for Eggbert, their passenger, to allow him to safely land on his return trip from outer space. In this activity, they also learned about the importance of wearing seat belts while traveling. They also built miniature rockets made out of straws, pieces of notes cards used for wings, and clay for the nose tip. Their objective was to use a special launcher to try to land their rocket on a specific target. If their first launch wasn’t successful, they were given opportunities to make modifications to their launch to try to reach their desired target. They also conducted a chromatography experiment using different black markers to determine which marker was used to write a special note. One more activity they completed was programming robots to maneuver through an obstacle course.
On their field trip, they were able to take a guided tour of the South Dakota Air and Space Museum, as well as observe experiments using liquid nitrogen. A highlight was sampling ice cream made with the liquid nitrogen.
The St. Joseph’s 5th graders really enjoyed the week. Some of their comments about Starbase were,
“it was awesome,” and “we got to do some really neat experiments.”
