Straw Rockets
- 1st through 3rd Grade -
The Challenge!
1) Build a rocket with all the main components and launch it successfully.
2) Make an adjustment to your rocket design and test to look for changes in flight.
3) Make adjustments to the launch angle to explore the effect on flight.
Challenge Constraints
1) You are limited to the use of straws, paper, tape, scissors and clay.
2) You must make alterations to your design and test again to explore their effect on flight.
Student Skills In Focus
Learning Goals
Students will:
Create a functioning rocket and launch it.
Alter design components to the rocket and relaunch.
Compare results of launch efforts as data to improve design solutions.
Use the challenge to develop the Pillar Skills in focus.
Questions To Ask Students:
How can you build the highest flying rocket?
How can you build the furthest flying rocket?
How does the design and placement of the rocket's fins change the flight pattern?
Essential Questions:
What design strategies help to make flight easier?
How does failure help people to make things better?
NJ Student Learning Standards:
3-5-ETS1-1 Define a simple design problem reflecting a need or a want that includes specified criteria for success and constraints on materials, time, or cost. •
3-5-ETS1-2 Generate and compare multiple possible solutions to a problem based on how well each is likely to meet the criteria and constraints of the problem. •
3-5-ETS1-3 Plan and carry out fair tests in which variables are controlled and failure points are considered to identify aspects of a model or prototype that can be improved.
• 3-PS2-1 Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence of the effects of balanced and unbalanced forces on the motion of an object.
• 3-PS2-2 Make observations and/or measurements of an object’s motion to provide evidence that a pattern can be used to predict future motion.