Eighth graders experience Mars
Published 8:00 pm Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Milton Marshall and Brandon Winchester-Jones were on the remote team, using a glove box to protect themselves from radioactive Martian rocks. The thick-lined gloves allowed them to test many properties of the rocks from Mars and compare them to Earth to see if they could identify them.
Eighth graders from Amy Cummings and Brad Yauchstetter›s science classes at Dowagiac Middle School completed a simulated mission to Mars on April 11-13.
They attended the Challenger Learning Center in the Kalamazoo Valley Museum, which is one in 48 across the nation, which was built to honor the Challenger Shuttle that exploded in 1986.
This mission is designed for middle school students to experience teamwork and a hands-on learning experience involving science and math.
This mission takes place in the year 2076, with a group of students already stationed on Mars awaiting a space shuttle with replacement astronauts to allow them to return to Earth.
Students on both Mars and in the space shuttle must work together to solve real-world problems to land the spacecraft safely.
After the mission was complete, students had the opportunity to watch a planetarium show as well as explore the Kalamazoo Valley Museum.
