STS-118 Engineering Design Challenge

I am so excited that my students will participate in the STS-118 Engineering Design Challenge: Lunar Plant Growth Chamber! It is a perfect way for me to implement real world inquiry based science to my junior high students. The students will be engaged in hands-on, minds-on science exploration. We will begin by using the Space Garden to duplicate the projects on the ISS and space shuttle. Then I will challenge students to design, build and evaluate their own chambers. To test, students will build duplicate chambers to compare plants grown from both space-flown and Earth-based control seeds. Students may study seed germination rates, how fast the basil grows compared to Earth basil, and/or sizes and number of leaves. I'm sure these plans will be everchanging, since the students will be doing the questioning and exploring. It will be fun to watch the students meet this challenge!

Julie Miller, Science Teacher
Olathe Kansas