On January 30, two Ambassadors from Georgia Tech's "Women in Engineering" program met with 34 girls from the seventh grade about engineering careers. After an interesting introduction to the various engineering fields, the WIE Ambassadors led the girls in a STEM activity called "Touchdown: Designing a Lunar Lander".
Within the "Lunar Lander Challenge", students had to overcome the challenges of landing a spacecraft on the surface of the moon while considering the speed at which the spacecraft was traveling and the density of the moon's surface. Working within groups, the students played the role of NASA aerospace engineers and developed plans to safely land their marshmallow "astronauts" on the surface. Through a process of brainstorming, designing, creating, testing, and re-designing, all of the student groups constructed unique shock-absorbing systems to protect their two marshmallow astronauts.
During the learning experience, students designed and built a shock-absorbing system out of paper, tape, straws, cardboard, and marshmallows. The students repeatedly tested their designs and made adjustments to further improve their contraptions.
Check out the videos and pictures below to see the students' hard work!