Rocketry Planet

WICHITA, Kansas USA — Forget falling fruit. Truesdell Middle School students study Newton's laws of physics with model rockets.

Brenda Kuhns' eighth-grade science students tried to measure and calculate how high their Estes rockets shot into the air this week by tracking the brown smoke they emitted through paper cylinders.

Shaun Bathgate wieghs his rocket before launch. Photo: Dave Williams.

Eighth-grade science students at Truesdell Middle School built rockets, which they launched this week. Photo: Dave Williams.

The electric-powered rockets were paid for by a classroom grant Kuhns and other teachers applied for last year when they found out a physics lessons had to be added to eighth-grade science curriculum.

The $5,000 mini-grant from the Education Edge helped pay for other types of rocket experiments for the past month, including ones made out of paper and from 2-liter bottles.

Next week the district will choose 15 innovative classroom projects like the Truesdell rockets to receive a total of $52,000 in grants.

Faulty protractor measurements prevented Kuhns' students from quickly determining how high their rockets soared Tuesday, but Isela Salas said she and her classmates had worked through rocket challenges before.

"It's kind of fun," she said.

"But it was frustrating when we didn't put the parts together right."

Kuhns said she wanted each of her 80 students to launch his or her own rocket, instead of working in groups.

"It's nice to be able to go out and get what I needed" for that size project, she said.

The money that funds the Education Edge grants is managed by the nonprofit Wichita Community Foundation and is distributed by the school district.

The grant program started four years ago with funding from about 20 local businesses. Giving has remained steady, including a significant amount from district employees, said Russell Miller, director of the district's grants and development services department.

There have been more questions from teachers about how to apply for grants as the district faces cuts in state funding next school year, Miller said.

The grants also provide thousands of dollars for athletics and fine arts.

In the past few years, grants have paid for musical instruments and helped increase the number of students in band, said Ross Hollander, chairman of the committee that oversees grant distribution.

"It folds into the whole underlying principle of Education Edge -- the things that keep (students) in school, it's the extracurricular activities or teacher innovation," he said.

Kuhns, the Truesdell teacher, said she sees students more involved in the lessons because of the projects, which in turn creates more interest in science.

"For the first time this year... I had a kid tell me he wanted to be an astronaut," she said. "Two girls told me they wanted to be engineers."

Copyright © 2009, The Wichita Eagle.