Surviving in Space


Welcome!

Arizona Science Center would like to officially welcome you and your children to Virtual Camp Innovation Summer Camp. Our mission is to inspire, educate and engage curious minds through SCIENCE.

Below is an itemized list of materials your child will need each day. Along with that we will also be listing any other information you might need as well. We also ask that you and the campers read through the Internet Etiquette form and submit it on the first day of camp.

Meet your instructor

Hello! My name is Gabrielle Paduano and I am so excited to be joining Camp Innovation this year! I went to school for Biology and Environmental science, and have been at Arizona Science Center for almost 3 years. When I'm not here, I love painting, camping, hiking, and kayaking!

You can reach me at: paduanog@azscience.org

Meet your instructor

My name is Josh Bergeleen and I am a member of the full-time learning team here at Arizona Science Center. Prior to working at the Science Center, I was a middle school math teacher, but I love that I am now able to be curious with, and learn alongside, children of all ages. When not teaching I am either watching the sunset in Papago Park or scrolling through Netflix looking for food/cooking related tv shows.

You can reach me at: bergeleenj@azscience.org

Day 1:

Essential Materials:

  • Space to exercise! Paper and pencil, clothespin or binder clip, thick gloves or oven mitts, ruler, tennis ball

  • 5 plastic sandwich bags, cereal, book, paper and pencil

  • Capri Sun pouch, bendable straw, tape, paper, scissors, coloring materials (crayons, markers, etc.)

Recommended Materials (used by instructors):

  1. Astronaut Training:

    1. Clothespins

    2. Timer/stopwatch

    3. Rulers

    4. Thick gloves

    5. Tennis balls

    6. Rulers

  2. Bone Density:

    1. Plastic snack bags

    2. Corn puff cereal

    3. Heavy textbook

    4. Permanent marker

  1. Capri Sun Stomp Rocket Launchers:

    1. Scissors

    2. Duct Tape

    3. Invisible Tape

    4. Coloring materials (crayons, markers, etc.)

    5. Capri Sun (emptied)

    6. Bending Straw

Day 2:

Essential Materials:

  • Empty plastic bottle with top cut off (2-Liter bottle or 16.9 fl oz water bottle), seeds (fast-growing seeds like radishes or squash recommended), water, paper towels

  • Small bowl, 12 Inches of string/yarn, paper and pencil, a few differently-sized objects (for example: a ping pong, tennis ball, and a baseball)

Recommended Materials (used by instructors):

  1. Space Garden (Hydroponics):

    1. 2-liter Soda Bottle (clean and empty)

    2. Fast-Growing Seeds (radishes or squash work best)

    3. Paper-Towels

    4. 1 Liter of Water

    5. Color Mixing Lights

  1. Variation of Communication Training:

    1. Small bowl

    2. Different size balls

    3. Video link of Mission Control, CapCom, or Apollo 11’s CapCom chatter when landing on the moon

Day 3:

Essential Materials:

  • A Lego (or other figurine) to represent your astronaut, paper/styrofoam cup, string, scissors, object to poke a hole in your cup

  • Parachute building materials (plastic bags, coffee filters, napkins, etc.), marshmallows/cotton ball, dixie cup, string, scissors, tape, somewhere to drop your parachute!

  • Materials to build a shock absorber (marshmallows, index cards that can be folded, rubber bands, straws, etc.), dixie cup, cardboard

Recommended Materials (used by instructors):

  1. Forces at Play:

    1. Small Lego person or other figurine

    2. Paper cup

    3. String

    4. Scissors

    5. Pen or other sharp object

  2. Parachute Design:

    1. Parachute material (plastic bags, coffee filters, large napkins, tissue paper, etc.)

    2. Large marshmallows

    3. Meter stick

    4. String or yarn

    5. Scissors

    6. Stopwatch

    7. Paper cups

    8. Tape

  1. Touchdown:

    1. 1 piece of stiff paper or cardboard (approximately 4 x 5 in/10 x 13 cm)

    2. 1 small paper or plastic cup

    3. 3 index cards (3 x 5 in/8 x 13 cm)

    4. 2 regular marshmallows

    5. 10 miniature marshmallows

    6. 3 rubber bands

    7. 8 plastic straws

    8. scissors

    9. tape

Day 4:

Essential Materials:

  • A few types of rocks from your backyard or neighborhood, small cup of vinegar, penny, nail, and magnet (optional)

  • Paper and pencil

Recommended Materials (used by instructors):

  1. Moon Mining:

    1. Rock samples

    2. Penny

    3. Nail

    4. Vinegar

    5. Plastic cup

    6. Magnet

    7. Tile

  2. Habitat Planning:

    1. Paper

    2. Pencil

Day 5:

Essential Materials:

  • Materials to build a robotic arm: cardboard and/or cardboard tubes, straws, spoon, tape

  • Materials to that allow your arm to move, like rubber bands, binder clips, or pipe cleaners; objects to move, open space (a table or area on the floor)

  • A square foot of either cardboard, cotton, or fabric with a hole cut in the middle

  • “Waterproof” material to test, like fabric, cotton, plastic wrap, bubble wrap, etc; water; sharpened pencil (or scissors with adult supervision)

Recommended Materials (used by instructors):

  1. Robotic Arm:

    1. Cardboard or cardstock (for alternative lunar module set-up, if desired)

    2. Rectangular aluminum pan with rocks/dirt (for alternative set-up, if desired)

    3. Objects to grab (if utilizing original directions)

    4. Masking tape

    5. Duct tape

    6. Paper towel rolls/tubes

    7. Rubber bands (thin and thick)

    8. Straws

    9. Paper clips

    10. Plastic spoons/sporks

    11. Binder clips

    12. Dowels

    13. Pipe cleaners

    14. Craft sticks

    15. Assorted craft supplies

  1. Spacesuit Repair/Simulated Disaster:

    1. 12”x 12” square of cotton material with 4” diameter hole cut in the middle

    2. Several small scraps of various types of fabric

    3. Small squares of bubble wrap

    4. Plastic wrap

    5. UV beads

    6. Ultraviolet light (either artificial or sunlight, bulbs are sufficient)

    7. Masking tape

    8. Scissors

    9. Water pitcher

    10. Dixie cups

9am Session

90-minute class Zoom call Link

Click HERE for Grades 1-3

Click HERE for Grades 3-6

Click HERE for 12:30 Facebook LIVE Demo

Click HERE for 5:00-5:15 p.m. Zoom Check-In call Link

11am Session

90-minute class Zoom call Link

Click HERE for Grades 1-3

Click HERE for Grades 3-6

Click HERE for 12:30 Facebook LIVE Demo

Click HERE for 5:00-5:15 p.m. Zoom Check-In call Link

1pm Session

90-minute class Zoom call Link

Click HERE for Grades 1-3

Click HERE for Grades 3-6

Click HERE for 12:30 Facebook LIVE Demo

Click HERE for 5:00-5:15 p.m. Zoom Check-In call Link

Rachel Yellowhair

Rachel Yellowhair is the site services west region manager for Raytheon Technologies (RTX). Her 19 years of experience include increasing responsibilities within Information Technology (IT) in systems administration, systems analysis, project management, and technical leadership positions. Yellowhair earned her bachelor’s degree in mathematics and master’s degree in information systems.

Alex Beresford

Alex Beresford grew up in Colorado and went to the University of Arizona to get her degree in Systems Engineering. Alex started as a Systems Engineering in Whole Life Engineer at Raytheon 3 years ago. Alex likes to hike, travel, and spend time with her dogs.

Day 1

90-minute Zoom Call:

  • Astronaut Training (Gr. 1-2) - Train like an astronaut, doing various athletic and coordination activities to prepare for space travel.

  • Bone Density (Gr. 3-6) - Identify the effects of decreased bone mass in space, using cereal as a model.

  • Capri Sun Stomp Rocket Launchers - Campers will make straw rockets and explore propulsion by using their Capri Sun pouches as a stomp rocket launcher.

Facebook Live Activity 12:30 pm:

  • Invisible Force - Design a setup so that when a steel ball rolls past a magnet, it changes direction and hits a target that’s off to the side (the same way astronauts use the gravity of planets to pilot their spacecraft).

Extension At-Home Activity:

  • Drag & Force with Hot Wheels - Campers will use toy cars to model how a rocket must overcome drag and the forces of gravity to get outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

Day 2

90-minute Zoom Call:

  • Space Garden (Hydroponics) - Campers will build a hydroponic germinator using water, paper towels, and a plastic bottle. (Hydroponics allows people to grow food without soil, which is important because the soil on the Moon is not like the soil here on Earth.)

  • Variation of Communication Training - Campers will simulate how a NASA team uses communication, attention to detail, and teamwork to complete a mission.

Facebook Live Activity 12:30 pm:

  • Nutrition - Understand how dehydrating food allows us to survive in severe situations by providing a consistent food source. Reproduce the dehydration process used by NASA to prepare food using a food dehydrator.

  • Tuesday, July 21 @ 3pm

Extension At-Home Activities:

  • Forces of Spaceflight - Through physical experimentation, students will learn about motions and forces and transfer of energy as they explore the basics behind the four forces of flight.

  • Paper Airplane Experiments - By making and flying paper airplanes, you can discover some of the basic principles of aerodynamics.

  • Design a Landing Module (Gr.3-6) - Campers need to design a landing module for their egg-stronaut using only the supplies given. The aim is to land the egg un-cracked and in the center of the target.


Day 3

90-minute Zoom Call:

  • Forces at Play - This activity explores centripetal force and the concept of G-force. Astronauts feel tremendous amounts of G-force during lift-off in space craft and they train for these forces by spinning around quickly in a “human centrifuge” (or a lego figure in a styrofoam cup).

  • Parachute Design (Gr. 1-2) - Design and build a parachute system that will protect marshmallow “astronauts” when they land.

  • Touchdown (Gr. 3-6) - Design and build a shock-absorbing system that will protect two “astronauts” when they land.

Facebook Live activity 12:30 pm:

  • Touchdown or Parachute Design Challenge?

Extension At-Home Activities:

  • Gloves Galore - See if you can assemble nuts and bolts using ‘Astronaut’ style gloves.

  • Daily Care in Space - Even everyday tasks like washing your hair and eating can be a challenge in space. Watch how astronauts overcome the trials of daily life in space. This includes perhaps the most commonly asked question of an Astronaut: “How do you use the toilet in space?”

  • Buoyancy - What is neutral buoyancy, and how does it resemble zero gravity (weightlessness)? Campers will test different materials for buoyancy.


Day 4

90-minute Zoom Call:

  • Moon Mining - Campers will practice classifying rock samples - just like astronauts might do with rocks they find on the moon!

  • Habitat Planning - Discuss the basic needs for a permanent habitat on the Moon’s surface and create a plan for a lunar habitat.

Facebook Live Activity 12:30 pm:

  • Moon Mining Extension? OR Quake-Proof Structures?

Extension At-Home Activities:

  • Quake-Proof Structures - Did you know that the Moon has moon-quakes, similar to how the Earth has earthquakes? Using coffee stirrers and clay, can you design a structure that’s stable and sturdy enough to survive a quake’s vibrations?

  • Moon Mining Extension - Campers will locate and simulate the mining of ilmenite (crushed Alka-Seltzer tablets) for it’s oxygen from the surface of the moon.

  • Flying Things (Gr. 1-2) - Campers will create a “spacecraft” that can efficiently use wind as a propellant.

  • Water on the Moon (Gr. 3-6) - Campers will filter “lunar ice core” samples to discover how much lunar soil/ice they would need to survive on the Moon.

Day 5

90-minute Zoom Call:

  • Robotic Arm - Campers make robotic arms to comb through a “lunar terrain” to collect rock/soil samples.

  • Spacesuit repair or another simulated disaster for last training exercise - Campers will use different materials to patch a simulated spacesuit.

Facebook Live Activity 12:30 pm:

  • Spacesuit repair (UV beads and light)? Bionic hand example? Robotic Rover demo?

Extension At-Home Activities:

  • Bionic Hand (Gr.3-6) - In this activity, campers build a bionic hand made out of cardboard, strings, straws and rubber bands. What is the advantage to using robots on the moon?

  • Dramatic Play (Gr. 1-2) - Campers create their own unique space rockets using cardboard tubes, clothespins, and a plastic egg.

  • Thursday, July 23 @ 5pm (this takes the place of the Family Zoom Call)

Virtual SiS Camp Supply List (July 20)

For more information: https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis/

Invisible Forces: https://go.nasa.gov/2XEKziI

More Solar System information: pbskids.org/designsquad/links/solarsystem

Video Resources