Panther CLAWS

The Chip 'n' Ship will be used to study the composition of asteroids. We hope to educate students of all ages about how our solar system was formed and how astronauts can use our device to learn more about its history, which closely follows the North Carolina education standard 6.E.1. Here are some of the fun, hands-on activities we plan to use to make sure students are engaged and learning:

1. Make your own Chip 'n' Ship! - We give students materials to try to remove a "sample" from an asteroid (a chocolate chip cookie). This demonstrates the basic principles behind our device, and exercises critical thinking and engineering skills.

2. Tater Crater - Students toss potatoes into a plastic bin filled with a layer of flour and a layer of cocoa powder. They get to observe the "impact craters" made by the potatoes and learn about how a crater if formed from a meteor impact.

3. Gravity Gym - Students lift buckets with different amounts of sand in them to represent the differences in gravity on the Earth, on the Moon, and on an asteroid. We will explain how the low gravity on an asteroid's surface makes it difficult for an astronaut to work with tools.

We already have plans to debut these activities on HPUniverse day 2015, an event that is predicted to draw over 2,000 people!