3, 2, 1, blastoff! This week, Early Engineers built these K'nex rockets to learn about orbit, trajectory, and aerospace engineering!
Trajectory is the path followed by a projectile or a flying object moving under the action of given forces. Note how the second picture above shows the rocket's curved path: this is the path the rocket must take to successfully leave the earth’s atmosphere and enter orbit.
An orbit is a regular, repeating path that one object in space takes around another one. An object in an orbit is called a satellite. A satellite can be natural, like Earth or the moon, or a satellite can be manmade, like the International Space Station or a Space craft like the ones our Early Engineers built this week!
We saw all kinds and colors of rocket ships in this week's classes. Some students built their rockets tall enough to touch the ceiling, others built launch pads, space stations, shuttles and even more amazing designs. We're continually impressed with the range of creativity our Early Engineers put into their weekly building projects, and we hope you are too! Join us again next week, when our Early Engineers will explore simple machines and mechanical engineering!
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