The Return to the Moon Challenge project had us get into groups of six, then further divide into two research teams: design and site. I was on the site team, which chose three potential locations for our lunar base. The three we chose were the Peary Crater rim, Plaskett Crater rim, and Malapert Mountain on the rim of the Shackleton Crater. We decided on the Malapert Mountains because they receive near-constant sunlight, have only a two day lunar night, and are tall enough to have great radio transmission. We also had to determine a power source (solar power) and an experiment (greenhouse). The design team helped with these aspects, and they also designed a model of the base and determined the necessary resources and recycling that the team would need. Finally, we had to think of how our base could expand in the future and become self-sufficient.
I really liked the large teams for this project. Having three people per team made the research easier, and when someone on either team couldn't think of something to do, they could always help the other team. We definitely had sufficient time for this project, which allowed us to build fantastic models and really understand the factors involved in building a lunar base.
I didn't like the research portion of this project, because it was difficult to sort out factual and speculative information on possible lunar bases. For example, some things were not fully explained in the research (how to convert water ice to rocket fuel) so we had trouble fully understanding them.
To make this project better, maybe Mrs. Gratton could add links to the resources drive to pages with credible information about the moon, so that we would fully understand the environment that the team would be going into. I think this would make it much easier to begin research if we had background information to go from!
i really liked the groups as well! and your right, some concepts had not been really explained only because they weren't really working yet which was difficult.
ReplyDeleteI love the In Depth explanation Shannon! Yours was really detailed and I would vote for it in a contest any day! I agree with the posting of resource links and also didn't much like the resource portion!
ReplyDeleteNice Job!
Mike
I also really enjoyed the teams. It gave us a group to fall back on with questions and concerns making the experience a little bit better. As you know,I had the experiment part of the project so the research wasn't as bad for me since i had an idea of what i was looking for. I didn't mind researching because i was able to find sites that wouldn't have bothered to look for otherwise.
ReplyDeleteI know you guys in the site team had a hard time with the research and I think some links would definitely help with that, for the design team the main research we had to do was already done for us in the packet. I did like the size of the groups, I think they were perfect, and I also like how we were able to choose our groups, that was a lifesaver :) thanks for all your help with the project shannon :)
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