Cratersville in Worcester: Circa 2014

John Wilkes, Lee Mink-Yu, David Irwin and Jake Shomaker
Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Abstract

Fifth graders, age 10 are probably going to be the chosen ones. By that I mean that in 30 years they will be astronaut age (about 40) and be eligible to compete for slots on the first trips to Mars and to build the infrastructure necessary for a second generation (real architecture and built of local materials) lunar base. How should they be recruited and trained? We spent two months (twice a week for 45 minutes) teaching "space enriched" 5th grade science to a class of 18 fifth graders to get some ideas.

We decided to see how much of the science in the 5th grade text one could teach using the theme of a lunar base setting aside the text and teaching the same concepts "hands on". Science became the fun class. The capstone event -probably a field trip- to end the unit was a special challenge. There was a budget of $1000 to spend on all three 5th grade classes at the Elm Park School- about 54 students. In the end, 400 fifth graders went to WPI to hear a distinguished speaker who writes for this age group and visit 6 "stations" representing different aspects of a lunar base. One of the stations was the lunar base "Design Review" and that session thrilled them.

One student asked "Are you going to build it-here?" We discovered that he meant he planned to come back next year and hoped to see a full scale simulated base one could walk through. The speakers asked who (60 kids in the room) would want to go see such a simulated lunar base- if the colleges and schools of Worcester could mock one up before they were in high school? Every hand went up. So, that would be the ultimate science field trip.

Presented at ISDC 2011 - Huntsville. Paper and presentation charts are not available.