Learn to Build a Rocket in Five Days or Your Money Back
Students learn what it takes to build rockets.
Students discover the entire process that goes into designing rockets. In previous lessons in this unit, students learned how rockets work; now they learn what real-world decisions engineers must make when designing and building rockets. They learn about many important aspects such as supplies, ethics, deadlines and budgets. They also learn about the engineering design process and that the first design is almost never the final design. Re-engineering is a critical step in creating rockets.
When designing rockets, engineers must not only consider how far and fast they need to go, but also how much they cost, how safe they will be, how heavy they will be, and what impact they will have on the environment. Very often, the strongest design is too heavy or too expensive, so the designs evolve to find compromises that satisfy all the project requirements. The revised designs are called design iterations, which means engineers design and test, discover what needs to be fixed and improved, and then redesign and test until they attain a satisfactory final design.
After this lesson, students should be able to:
- Define and give an example of a "tradeoff" in engineering design.
- Explain that the engineering design process has several steps, that a first design of a project is rarely perfect, and it may take several redesigns before a project is considered acceptable.
- Give an example of a factor to consider when building a rocket, such as: limited budget, customer needs, time limit, available resources, ethical considerations, environmental considerations, safety considerations, as well as the rocket's performance.