 Children have a real zeal for life and a curiosity to learn. Many young people have an incredible fascination and romance with airplanes and rocket ships in outer space. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is directed by law to report to the public upon developments in peaceful uses and exploration of air and space. For this reason, every NASA field center has an office that works with the general public as well as educators to disseminate knowledge gained as a result of NASA's research efforts. One of the ways that NASA works with educators is through our Aerospace Education Workshop program. These workshops are cosponsored each year by universities, colleges and school districts across the whole United States. Although the content of Aerospace Workshop varies, often teachers are introduced as such topics applications in scientific satellites, principles of rocketry, exploration of the solar system, aeronautics, manned spaceflight activities and the arts in space. In addition, teachers are often introduced to the uses of community resources, such as a visit to the local airport, planetarium, weather bureau or aerospace industry. Hello, my name is Lynn Bondrant, Chief of the Public Services Office at the NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. And it's my pleasure to be your host as you visit the 11th annual Teacher's Workshop, The Sky is Your Classroom, cosponsored by Baldwin Wallace College, Kent State University and the Lewis Research Center. In the next few minutes, you will be introduced into how model rockets are used to teach about the principles of rocketry, how eggs are packaged to represent an astronaut landing on another planet and how a trip to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History was used to introduce a telescope in planetarium, plus lots, lots more. Nancy, why are you taking the Teacher Workshop? I'm taking it because I've heard so many wonderful things about it. A lot of my friends have already taken the workshop and have highly recommended it to other teachers. So that's why I'm taking it this summer. I'm taking the Teacher Workshop primarily because I've heard good things about it. And also what I'm hoping to get out of it is to get some ideas for things I can do in the classroom and also some ideas I can use to help other teachers in our system with the workshop. Great, thanks. All right, we want to do another activity. And this one is one that I thoroughly enjoyed doing with teachers and students. And I would love someday to be able to do it with the administration. Especially that person in that school who is in charge of talking on the squawk box all the time. You know, you catch three of the 15 words that they say and you try to put the three together and you don't have any idea what they're talking about. So we're going to play a little game called Communication. And what we're going to do is we're going to have some tracking stations, which will be some of you people, up behind the curtains here just around the corner is these same objects assembled into a given object, okay? On top of it is a round shape with eight holes going around it and a center hole. This, the center hole is perpendicular to the object. The blue spoke is put in one of these side holes. Keep going. Perpendicular, still above that, straight up is a yellow spoke about two inches in length. Stuck into one of the holes. On top of that is a green bin shape. Stuck in, narrow end down, wide end up. You didn't get all the way through. Bring it out here, Mike. Yes. Fall down with it. Yeah. Okay, bring it down and then take it and walk it along and take a look to see how well they did, Mike. Scientific and application satellites affect our lives daily. We use communication satellites to tie the world closer together. Meteorological satellites to see weather on a global basis. Scientific satellites to monitor the earth and its atmosphere from space. A visit to the Lewis Research Center provides an opportunity to see firsthand the facilities and equipment that have played a significant role in aeronautical space and energy research. The first A in NASA stands for aeronautics. In a workshop, teachers construct model airplanes to learn about the principles of flight, lift, drag, and thrust. The cowling, which is the front part of the plane here, and the propeller, this has a three-bladed propeller, some have two-blade props, and this one has little electrical de-icing boots here so that if we get into ice, we can turn this on and the heat in the boot itself will help to melt the ice off. The spinner here causes the shape to be more streamlined, so it reduces the resistance of the drag. The nose gear, of course, retracts up into the fuselage. We have a landing light here for a night flying or any time you're around an airport environment, and you want to turn the light on so other people can see you easily. One thing that you might not think about is the Wright brothers are credited with the first successful heavier-than-air aircraft. At the end of December... well, the middle of December 1903. Okay, now, the Europeans, the English and the French, did the most developing early aircraft, but the first aircraft was flown in Europe. It wasn't flown in Europe until 1906, so you've got at least a two-year difference there at the minimum between the first aircraft flown in the United States and the first one in Europe. But if you go to, say, like 1910, 1911, 1912, most all of the aircraft that were built and flying were built in Europe, and you have any idea why they were not built in the United States? It's mainly because the Wright brothers were having a fight over their patent on the controllability. The main person they were against was a guy by the name of Glenn Curtis, and they had a big fight, and it didn't end really until in the 1930s. So we didn't develop many airplanes. Whenever Curtis would build an airplane, the Wrights would say he was infringing on their patent. But now in England and France, they really didn't care about the Wright's patent, so they just went ahead and built airplanes. Hot air balloons. This is how it started out, 1783. That's the biggest difference between a planetarium and an observatory. A lot of times teachers will mix them up. People come into the planetarium for the first time and they'll say, well, what they do is they open the ceiling up and show you what the sky looks like. Well, that doesn't happen in the planetarium. That happens only in an observatory, so there is a very distinct difference. There is a machine, of course, in the middle of the room, here, and in this case, it's a telescope. Here's the edge of the sun. I'm not sure if that's the leading or the following edge. I'd have to figure out the optics. I believe that's probably the following edge there. We go across the disk here again. There's those spots. And there is the other end. When the space telescope becomes operational, we will be able to see Tim Times farther into space than we can now. We will be able to see objects 50 times fainter than we can on the Earth. We will increase our visible universe to a volume 350 times what it is today. Think of the exciting discoveries that lie ahead. So, in these flights, we're pretty small in statute. Remember, in the Apollo program, in the early programs, the astronaut could be no taller than 5 foot 11 and weigh no more than 175 pounds. The reason that was because of the size of the spacecraft. Auto-sequence initiated flight. Roger. Ignition flight. Roger. Okay, the battle has a look. Looks good here, flight. Good agreement. Okay, let's see how he looks. Okay, Capcom, we'll go beyond the sound. Okay, we're going one. In the past few minutes, you've seen just a portion of the activities that are carried out during the workshop sessions. Many other activities and sessions are conducted to familiarize teachers to provide up-to-date information and provide an overview of air and space concepts and terms. Kevin, why are you taking the air and space workshop here at Lewis? Well, my wife took it last year and she had taken it about seven or eight years before. So, she's actually taken the same workshop twice and sitting at home and getting all the stories of the experiences and the fun that she's had here. I decided it was my turn. I teach ninth graders science in fact, I would have taken it last year except someone had to stay home and watch the kids. So, this is my year and my turn for the workshop. So, this year you get to share the stories with your wife? Right, she gets to stay home and take care of the kids. So, I'm really looking forward to a real fun experience. Well, that's great. Thanks. Thank you. Well, I am basically an English teacher, but every year my students are allowed to do an in-depth study on any subject that they choose. They contract to do this program on their own. And so, many of them in recent years have been interested in flying in space and it's something that I know so little about. I thought this was an opportunity for me to learn. That's great. Why do you think the students are so much interested in their in space? Well, because it's a coming thing and the possibility of living sometime on another planet is very feasible, especially when you look back at all the other Buck Rogers things that we've had in the past. So, the dreams of yesterday really do become the realities of today. Exactly. The future is where our young people will live. We owe them the opportunity to dream, to wonder, to imagine, to research and experiment. Who knows what experience will become a memorable moment in their young lives that possibly could change the course of their future. Teaching air and space concepts can motivate and excite a young person to dream of their world of tomorrow.