Edible Rovers – High School
Figure 1. The Mars Pathfinder rover.Copyright http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/classroom/pdfs/MSIP-MarsActivities.pdf
Students act as Mars exploratory rover engineers, designing, building and displaying their edible rovers to a design review. To begin, they evaluate rover equipment and material options to determine which parts might fit in their given NASA budget. With provided parts and material lists, teams analyze their design options and use their findings to design their rovers.
As engineers solve problems, they follow the steps of the engineering design process. To build any engineered object (such as rovers, bicycles, music players or amusement park rides), engineers gather information and conduct research to understand the requirements of the problem. Then they brainstorm many imaginative possible solutions. They select the most promising idea and make a final design that includes drawings, and decisions on the materials and technologies to use. They create and test many prototypes, making improvements until the product is the best it can be.
After this activity, students should be able to:
- Design and construct an edible Mars rover.
- Use graphing methods and Algebraic expressions to effectively compare information.
- Describe the function of a Mars rover's scientific instrumentation.
- Understand/explain the engineering process behind designing and fabricating a Mars rover.