Rockets and Spreadsheets

Rockets

The project I reviewed is "Using Rockets to Prove Newton's 3rd Law of Motion." The basic idea of this lesson was to use rockets as a visible representation to facilitate student understanding of Newton's Third Law (to every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction). The basic steps of the project were as follows:


1. Build a variety of rocket models out of paper.
2. Test these models by using compressed air to launch.
3. Record distance of each rocket type.
4. Decide which rocket has greatest potential for use in final experiment.
5. Use optimum model of rocket to launch into Styrofoam, illustrating Newton's 3rd Law.


The use of spreadsheets came into play while recording the flight distances and calculating the average distance for each rocket type. By using these spreadsheets, students were quickly able to visualize which style of rocket was able to launch the farthest.

Overall this lesson was quite good. The students were able to begin with the basic information needed to understand Newton's law, but by the end of the assignment they were able to understand the law to a greater depth than would have occurred through lecture alone. The use of the spreadsheet prompted students to experiment a little more with the project. Once they compared distances and discovered what didn't work, they were able to narrow the field of options for rocket design and come up with better, more efficient designs of their own. This portion of the activity was key to changing the students understanding from strict knowledge to a deeper, more interactive process that helped them understand the concept more fully.


Adaptation

There are many different ways I would need to change the details of this lesson in order to use it as a History teacher. Obviously I wouldn't be able to use rockets (even thought that would be fun), and wouldn't have the emphasis on Newton's Third Law. However, I could still use the same pattern and structure of this lesson. Instead of focusing on Newton's law, I could teach a lesson about international relations in a specific historical time period. First, I would lay the groundwork for the students to gain a basic nuts-and-bolts understanding of diplomacy and international relations. After helping the students gain this basic knowledge, they would be given the opportunity to explore in greater depth about different famous international conferences (i.e. the Treaty of Versailles, the Potsdam Conference, the First and Second Continental Congresses, etc.). Through this research they could fill out a spreadsheet focusing on ways each conference was able to move the nations forward, and ways they held them back. Following this research stage, the students would be given the opportunity to put their knowledge to use by presenting a conference where they played similar roles to those they had read about. This would give the students the opportunity to take the knowledge they gained through their research, analyze it, and apply it to modern issues in a way unique to themselves.

While this isn't exactly the same as the project I reviewed, it takes the same process of the rockets project and modifies it to work for a History class. The same educational goals of promoting analysis and creative thought would still be met, just in a completely different field and venue to express it.