EMS GT students kicked off a new project Monday after receiving a challenge from Johnson Space Center.  Students were asked to design a way to make a shoe box fly...or at least glide.  Using any shoe box as the fuselage, students will design a glider using their knowledge of how the forces of flight interact to generate lift.  Test flights will determine the glide slope ratio and students will have an opportunity to modify their design based on their results.  Once they have maximized their design for longest sustained flight, they will prepare a presentation to deliver to the NASA representative describing how and why they chose their design, their findings through the test flight process, modifications they made, and data collected. Students report back to NASA on November 23.

In preparation for a video conference interaction with NASA's Johnson Space Center, students reviewed the forces of flight and directions of flight with the movement of different control surfaces.  After researching how an aircraft stays aloft, teams created an Educreations  with their explanation of these forces...

Click to watch student videos:

Logan, Aiden, Banjamin
Austin, Marshall
Mario, Tanner
Jonathan McGee
Seth Parker

Students in 7th and 8th Grade GT classes started the year with an engineering challenge.  Their task was to create a geodesic dome out of toothpicks and jelly beans that would withhold the maximum amount of weight.  The challenge started with one encyclopedia and was won by a team that developed a dome that held from A-JK World Book editions.  In the process students evaluated how their thinking progressed and saw how closely their process aligned to the Engineering Design Process that will use throughout the year to structure several projects.