ALEX Resources

   View Standards     Standard(s): [SC2015] ESS (9-12) 6 :

6 ) Obtain and evaluate information about Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Einstein to communicate how their findings challenged conventional thinking and allowed for academic advancements and space exploration.

In this lesson, students construct balloon-powered rockets to launch the greatest payload possible to the classroom ceiling. Student teams receive identical parts to build rockets. Then the teams compete to launch the greatest number of paper clips to space (the ceiling).

By utilizing this lesson, the students begin to understand that the scientific progress achieved is not a static process but a fluid one that has developed and changed overtime.  They also begin to realize that scientific advancement has incorporated a variety of scientists throughout history and time periods.

This lesson was created as part of the 2016 NASA STEM Standards of Practice Project, a collaboration between the Alabama State Department of Education and NASA Marshall Space Flight Center.

   View Standards     Standard(s): [SC2015] ESS (9-12) 6 :

6 ) Obtain and evaluate information about Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and Einstein to communicate how their findings challenged conventional thinking and allowed for academic advancements and space exploration.

[MA2019] PRE-19 (9-12) 7 :

7. Determine numerically, algebraically, and graphically the limits of functions at specific values and at infinity.

a. Apply limits of functions at specific values and at infinity in problems involving convergence and divergence.

[ELA2021] (11) 8 :

8. Read, analyze, and evaluate texts from science, social studies, and other academic disciplines and explain how those disciplines treat domain-specific vocabulary and content and organize information.

[ELA2021] (12) 8 :

8. Read, analyze, and evaluate texts from science, social studies, and other academic disciplines and explain how those disciplines treat domain-specific vocabulary and content and organize information.

Science fiction movies take it for granted that someday humans, or an alien race, will travel faster than the speed of light and build an intergalactic empire. Scientists aren't so sure that this is possible. It turns out that approaching the speed of light is very difficult. If Einstein's theories are correct, nothing that has mass can travel at the speed of light.

This informational material will apply a precalculus concept--limits of functions at infinity--to a well-known scientific theory--Einstein's theory of relativity. There is a video and links to additional information included.