March 12, 2001

NC State Students Fire Rockets at Fred Olds Elementary

Do all rockets go up the same way? This simple question from a third-grade student at Fred Olds Elementary School in Raleigh roused aerospace engineering students from North Carolina State University to launch a demonstration Friday, February 16.

Teachers at the school contacted Dr. William L. Roberts, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at NC State and associate director of the Applied Energy Research Laboratory. Roberts spoke to students of Sigma Gamma Tau, a national honor society for aerospace engineering students, and the student chapter of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) at NC State; they decided to help the children learn first-hand the answer to their question. Support for the project came from the discretionary outreach budget of the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

Before the rocket-launching day, the NC State students conducted "Discovery Day" at the school, November 1, 2000, during which they demonstrated a pulse jet and guided the elementary students in making paper airplanes.

Then on February 14, the NC State students returned to the school and helped the third graders build foot-tall rockets complete with a nose, fins and an engine. Two days later, the playground at Olds Elementary became a rocket-launching pad for 33 missiles as the crowd of future aerospace engineers yelled out each countdown. The students, who watched as the rockets spiraled skyward and the parachutes opened, were able to answer their own questions as they retrieved the rockets from all over the field: No – all rockets do not go up the same way.

-- rudd --

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