CHANDLER, Arizona USA — With a big whoosh and a cloud of smoke, model rockets soared over the south parking lot at the Motorola facility in south Chandler.

Jessica Garcia is seen through the smoke after she launched a rocket. Engineers and students took part in the 13th annual Carminati Elementary School Power Rocket Launch at a Chandler Motorola plant.

This wasn't just some employees blowing off steam at lunch time, it was the 13th annual Carminati Elementary School Power Rocket Launch, part of a partnership between the Tempe school and engineers at Motorola and Emerson Network Power.

Over a seven-week period, the engineers worked with the teams of students at the school in building the rockets in preparation for the launch. All the while, the 85 students were learning about principals of math and physics in addition to other skills such as teamwork, safety and being able to follow directions.
 
The team called Apollo 14, which named its rocket Blazing Fireball, found the experience to be both fun and educational. The team was made up of students Diana Cordova, Brendan Lange, Lily Luque and Giovanni Santizo working with Motorola engineer Scott Johnson.

In between explaining Sir Isaac Newton's three laws of physics to an onlooker, the team fretted over the weather as they were one of the early teams to launch. When Blazing Fireball took to the sky, a pretty strong wind blowing out of the east was keeping the rockets from reaching their full altitude potential. As some of the later teams launched, the wind had died down.

Teams received prizes for the highest altitude (they were topping out at about 700 feet), assembly, engineering, innovation in design and landing closest to the target. That last category was especially challenging given the winds as only two rockets actually landed in the parking lot. The rest touched down in various alfalfa and cotton fields around the facility.

"I did this (build model rockets) when I was a kid," said Johnson, who taught at Chandler High School before going into engineering about 20 years ago. "I still enjoy getting involved with kids. In addition to teaching about science in a hands-on way, this gives them an idea of what's available to them in the world."

The opportunity to broaden the students' horizons while augmenting the 5th grade science curriculum is a big benefit of the partnership, said teacher Linda Hubbard.

"Many of our kids have parents who didn't go to college," Hubbard said. "This gives the kids an insight into a world that they might not see otherwise."

Hubbard said she recently had a former student who had taken part in the rocket launch a previous year come back to speak to her current class.

"She's studying aeronautical engineering," Hubbard said. "She told them she's going to be a real rocket scientist."

And there's the possibility there might be more future scientists among the 85 students who took part in this year's launch.

"This really helped me get excited about rockets," said Alondra Sosa, one of Hubbard's students. "Before this I just thought they were boring."

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