./Blog

Project Theme Chosen

For this week’s meeting we got together and watched a video explaining how the International Space Station toilet works, after which the team brainstormed on different difficulties of space travel, which lead to discussion of nuclear power, waste disposal, time travel, asteroids, and more. In the end, the team settled on a theme around breathable air. They started talking about ways to filter the air and considered using plants to convert CO₂ to O₂, which lead to some ideas around water consumption and hydroponics.

Once again we spent some time (about 10 minutes) with the kids doing some “free build”. By our next meeting we should have all our parts for the kit so that we’ll be able to start building a base robot soon.

With Thanksgiving coming up, we’re going to take a week off, but before the next practice, each of the team members should do some research on:

• What existing technology is used for cleaning or recycling air?
• What are energy efficient ways to grow plants?
• How do plants grow without soil?
• Who are experts or resources that could be used to learn more about this?

Then the next time we meet they can fill out their Engineering Notebooks.

Links:

• Challenge Letter (project details are on the last page)
• Challenge Guide Letter (more detailed than the Challenge Letter)
• Scoring Rubric for Into Orbit
• Project - How To Videos (describes what you need to do for a project)
• Engineering Notebook