This lesson introduces the student to common spreadsheets (most videos are done with Google Sheets as this a free resource available to all students and works on Mobile devices, some videos will show any major difference between Sheets and Excel).  Spreadsheets are a powerful way to do large amounts of math quickly and effectively.  The usefulness of spreadsheet skills cannot be overstated for mission design.

Common Functions in spreadsheets that allows a user to find the biggest (max) or smallest (min) value in list of numbers.  This can be very useful for scoring purposes or making certain no critical constraints are broken.

A common and extremely useful function that allows the user to program two paths (or more) of action/analysis based on the value.  This is a great tool to apply for both simple analysis and more advanced applications.  This function overlaps strongly with introductory Programming.

A function that allows the user to Count the number of entries in a list.  The Countif function allows the user to count only the entries that meet a user specificed criterion.

Logically reordering information based on value, time, or quantity can be very useful in solving many challenges.

While Data Validation is a larger concept, this lesson focuses on Check Boxes as a means of easily selecting one or more components for mission design purposes.

This lesson shows how to import CSV (Comma Separated Values) files into Sheets and how to work with Time Stamp Values.  The end of the lesson also shows how to achieve the same in Excel (which has a few different steps).

This lesson gives an overview of how a user can employ 'Related Rates' and values to establish a 'Budget'.  For the purposes of our lessons a Budget is any time a user is tracking values Coming In (Input), Stored Internally (Capacity), and Going Out (Output).  Budgets are important to make certain missions are successful.  Common Budgets include:

 'Power Budget' to make certain that there is always appropriate electrical power in the battery. (Input: Solar Panels, Capacity:  Battery, Output: Power Needs)

'Data Budget' to make certain that there is appropriate space on the hard drive to collect data/pictures/measurements and retransmit them to a target location.  (Input: Sensor/Camera, Capacity:  Hard drive, Output:  Transmitter)

'Heat Budget' to make certain the internal temperature of the satellite is maintained within operating levels. (Input:  Heat rate from components, Capacity: Internal Threshold, Output:  Radiators)