By DANIELLE RUSH
GREENTOWN — Even from 30 feet up, it was obvious that Morgan Aprill, Jacqueline Johnson, Taylor Randolph and Kaitlyn Little’s “spegg shuttle” did not make a safe landing.
The girls and their classmates in Dennis Swender’s orientation to life and careers class at Eastern High School craned their necks over the side of the home bleachers in the football stadium, and could immediately tell that their “eggstronaut” did not survive the fall.
“We could tell right away,” Aprill said. “Ours just blew open and the egg went all over. It wasn’t pretty.”
Students in the class, which is required for all ninth-graders, worked in groups to construct a mock space shuttle out of recycled materials, including plastic bottles, metal cans, Styrofoam drink cups, newspaper, fast food bags and other materials.
To pass the project, the raw egg inside the shuttle must survive the fall from the top of the bleachers unbroken.
In this particular class, only one eggstronaut survived, so the designers went back to the drawing board to work out problems and try again.
Once the shuttle survives the drop, the groups must figure out how to launch their shuttle from the ground to the top of the bleachers, without touching it and without the egg breaking.
Corey Graham, Greg Huffman and Keith Lewis started the second task, as designers of the only successful shuttle.
They nestled the egg in a nest of newspaper, in a can that formerly held peas. They covered the can with a paper cup, then placed the whole thing in a Wendy’s bag.
Graham said their design took about 30 minutes to plan, and they considered five ideas.
To launch it to the top, he considered an idea to set the shuttle on one end of a skateboard, and then jump on the other side, launching it into the air.
“We’d have to stomp on it pretty hard,” he reasoned. His team abandoned that plan in favor of one involving string.
At the next table, Aprill, Johnson, Randolph and Little consider how they can re-imagine their shuttle to survive the drop. Aprill draws some possibilities on her notepad and suggests gluing carpet to the outside to absorb the blow.
Johnson thinks rubber cement could help.
“Does rubber cement bounce?” she asks, suggesting they could coat the egg in it.
Swender said the point of the exercise is not engineering — it’s learning how to work together as a team, how to keep trying to solve a problem and economics.
He sees the project as a launching pad into the class curriculum, which covers topics such as consumption, economics, recycling, writing, teamwork and persistence in problem solving.
Each team had a budget to purchase their materials. Swender required materials to be recyclable, to promote environmental consciousness.
He said it’s also important that the students figure out how to solve the problem without him giving them an answer, an important skill to have in the work force.
They’re also learning how to give specific directions, because when each team handed over their shuttles, he asked how they should be launched. If not given directions, he threw the shuttles hard, making it less likely the egg would survive.
“Hopefully they’ll get angry and learn to persist through things not going their way.”
Swender said the ability to work with people with varying opinions and ability levels also is an important life skill the students learn.
“They need to understand they don’t have to sacrifice their own beliefs and values, but they can treat people with respect and dignity, even if they don’t agree.”
Danielle Rush may be reached at (765) 454-8585 or via e-mail at danielle.rush@kokomotribune.com
