This week a former education Peace Corps volunteer of the Ruvuma region (my region of Tz) visited Songea as part of an Engineers without Borders trip. Now Michael is studying at Santa Clara for a master’s in applied mathematics. He does research in a robotics lab that deals with satellites. Throughout his travels in Tanzania he has been carrying a big metal antenna on his back in order to do satellite tracking demonstrations with students.
On Friday night we corralled about 20 of my physics students in order to track a satellite. First the students got to see pictures of various satellites and a video of a rocket launch that took satellites into orbit. In form 5 we have been learning about Newton’s laws of motion and many of my examples have included rockets, so it was great for the students to get a chance to see an actual rocket launch. Based on their pictures and notions of the path a rocket takes, I don’t think many of them had a solid idea of what a rocket actually is before this. Then the students got to use some software that shows a map of the world along with the path of the satellite’s orbit. We dialed in on Songea Tanzania and they got to see that the satellite would be passing directly over us. The satellite we were tracking was too small to be visible, but using the antenna we were able to pick up the satellite’s audio signal. The students had to hold up the antenna and follow the path of the satellite as it arched over our heads.
The girls absolutely loved it. I take the opportunity to see video of rocket launches and pictures of things like satellites for granted. But my students do not have computers or even textbooks with pictures of these things. Although they have heard about satellites this demonstration opened a whole new world to them. I want to use my computer more in the future to show them videos and pictures of modern technology and expose them to things that really make physics worth getting excited about.
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