Exploring Motion in Order from Chaos

In Earth and Cosmos, students have moved into our final module ‘How do we get there?’ where we consider how space exploration is attainable and more importantly how can we get back safely. This is very topical at the moment with the recovery of the large booster rocket achieved by Space X just last week!

In Weeks 1 and 2, students have been building their knowledge and understanding about the terminology of motion and interpreting motion on position vs time, velocity vs time and acceleration vs time graphs. This connects with mathematical understandings of rates of change with a simultaneous, interconnected introduction to Calculus principles. Similarly, students have been investigating Newton’s laws in order to describe the relationships between, force, mass and acceleration.

These concepts play an important role moving forward to Week 3 and beyond where students are undertaking a collaborative inquiry to investigate the impact of a soft-landing technology of their choice, on the change of motion of a payload. Students will design and iteratively test a soft-landing technology in groups, in order to individually analyse how effective their designs are on safely change the rate of motion of their payload e.g., an astronaut returning to Earth, recovering expensive equipment or delivering equipment to alternate planets etc. 

This module enables students to build and refine their problem, solving, analytical and evaluation skills moving forward into next year.