If schools are open as usual in the Fall (which seems decreasingly likely) I hope to start a rocketry program in my local high and/or middle school. But I don't know what I'm doing.
Let me put that another way. I can get some inexpensive, simple kits, probably a bulk pack. I can demonstrate construction steps then look over the kids' shoulders and advise them as they do it. I can give the appropriately simplified (but not more so) lessons, i.e. the parts of a rocket and the physics of stability.
But I'm suddenly afraid I'll discover when I start that there are a hundred other things about doing this that I haven't anticipated, and I'm now thinking of some that I realize I should have. I should go in with a plan, obviously, yet I'm coming to the realization that I have little idea what that plan should look like.
Let me put that another way. I can get some inexpensive, simple kits, probably a bulk pack. I can demonstrate construction steps then look over the kids' shoulders and advise them as they do it. I can give the appropriately simplified (but not more so) lessons, i.e. the parts of a rocket and the physics of stability.
But I'm suddenly afraid I'll discover when I start that there are a hundred other things about doing this that I haven't anticipated, and I'm now thinking of some that I realize I should have. I should go in with a plan, obviously, yet I'm coming to the realization that I have little idea what that plan should look like.
- What mix of theory and building?
- Assuming computers are available in the school, I'd like to incorporate OR designs and sims. So now I have to ask what mix of the three things, not just two?
- How long does it take a group of kids to build their first rockets?
- I don't figure it'll certainly be their first for all of them, but anybody who's built some before can wait for the others to catch up.
- What super-important, world shaking, club killing pitfall is there that has not even occurred to me?