{"id":270,"date":"2013-07-18T15:34:02","date_gmt":"2013-07-18T22:34:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/s4.sonoma.edu\/?p=270"},"modified":"2013-07-18T15:34:22","modified_gmt":"2013-07-18T22:34:22","slug":"jeffs-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/s4.sonoma.edu\/?p=270","title":{"rendered":"Jeff’s Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"20130711_154222\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Hi, my name is Jeffrey and I\u2019m a student from Napa Valley College working at Sonoma State University this summer. I applied to work for NASA E\/PO at SSU because I am majoring in aerospace engineering and working full-time for NASA is my ultimate goal. The work done by NASA E\/PO appealed to me a lot because I was excited to get some hands-on experience in rocketry and ballooning. I also appreciate the purpose of the S4 project, introducing rocketry to students at a younger age, making this hands-on experience more accessible to them by incorporating it into their math and science classes, and other activities the students are already involved in.<\/p>\n

Before I started working on the S4 project, I had no prior experience with soldering, and very limited experience in programming. However, it wasn\u2019t long before I was soldering all the components onto multiple flight boards, practically memorizing portions of the Educators Guide, and also familiarizing myself with the structure of each arduino sketch.<\/p>\n

During the week of the training, I assisted in helping the teachers learn the same things I was taught about the assembly and data interpretation of the payloads. It was nice being able to answer their questions when they ran into some of the same problems I had. Instructing people in a hands-on activity like this was a first for me, and I really appreciated getting feedback from them. I enjoyed hearing from them about how they plan to incorporate this training into their classrooms. I was also excited for their students who would experience the results of our hard work and have a teacher who is really engaged in the learning material and is as excited to demonstrate the applications of the things they are learning in a fun way.<\/p>\n

The rocket launch at the lake bed was definitely the highlight of my experience in the S4 project. While we were there, I had the task of pointing the directional antenna at each rocket as it launched and landed to maintain telemetry as the payloads collected data. Every countdown was exciting and I loved hearing the sound of the motors burning as the rockets took off. The dry heat was intense, but I thought it was well worth it as I was able to watch many other rockets launch. Some of them took off fast and loud, while a few others were completely destroyed, so I got to see a little bit of everything.<\/p>\n

Participating in the S4 project made this summer one of the most enjoyable and eventful summers I\u2019ve had in a while, not only for introducing me to high-power rocketry, but also for the opportunity to help educators inspire their students to develop a passion for things like physics, programming, rocketry, etc. in some cool ways other than by just shoving a textbook in their faces. I look forward to hearing about how creative the students can get with their experiments and I hope more schools and other learning institutions implement similar projects into their curriculum.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Hi, my name is Jeffrey and I\u2019m a student from Napa Valley College working at Sonoma State University this summer. I applied to work for NASA E\/PO at SSU because I am majoring in aerospace engineering and working full-time … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101013,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/s4.sonoma.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/s4.sonoma.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/s4.sonoma.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/s4.sonoma.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/101013"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/s4.sonoma.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=270"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/s4.sonoma.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":273,"href":"https:\/\/s4.sonoma.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270\/revisions\/273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/s4.sonoma.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/s4.sonoma.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/s4.sonoma.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}