Group of Heritage Middle School sixth-graders engaged in a robotics assignment connected to a NASA curriculum related to travel on planet Mars. Nanci Hutson/Courier
In Rob Lynch' sixth-grade robotics class at Heritage Middle School in the Chino Valley Unified School District, some 25 or more students were experimenting with simulated travel exploration of planet Mars, a sandy, obstacle-strewn terrain for their Lego-like land rovers to traverse.
Their assignment for the just-under-an-hour period was to test their rovers on a cardboard-and-sandpaper incline to see if their modifications to their cardboard wheels might enable them to gain the "torque," or angular acceleration, necessary to make the incline. He started with one level, and then made it steeper with glass pebbles arranged around the area the vehicles needed to go over.