Abbs Cross School, Commitment to Opportunity and Excellence
A Close Encounter with a Moonwalker
Abbs Cross School was invited to take a team of pupils to the Ardleigh Green campus of Havering College for the afternoon on 19th November. Volunteers were invited to take part, the first 6 responses winning a place on the team. These were Lauren Cooper, Lee Howe, Kemal Rogers, Arun Sharma, Emma Spray, Kai-Yin Wong. Mr Foot, our physics technician and me (Ms Ford), took the pupils by taxi to the College to find there were many Havering Schools already there. We noticed that there were tables holding rocket making materials set out with the schools names on.
First Charles Moss Duke Jr was introduced and gave a talk on his experience, initially as a member of the base control team for the first Apollo moon walk mission, to eventually piloting Apollo 16 and being the 10th person to walk on the moon. During his entertaining speech he showed a video of himself on the moon carrying out experiments, and dropping millions of pounds worth of equipment! Fortunately, due to the low gravity on the moon, the equipment wasn’t harmed.
After his speech he had time to answer 3 questions which I caught on video. These were about possible problems with the moon lift-off, the 80k memory capacity of the Apollo computers and the risks of re-entry to the Earths atmosphere.
Following this was a photo opportunity with Charles and the rocket making competition which he was to judge. Luckily we have plenty of experience in building rockets from Arts Week, physics lessons and Science Club, so we were quietly confident even though we were up against year11 teams.
For an air rocket, such as the one we were making, we knew that it had to have the simplest streamlined and balanced design. It had to fit snugly but be able to move smoothly on the firing tube, and airtight so that the air pumped into it had the maximum effect. The team worked well together, sharing out the different jobs and coming together with the completed pieces.
Unfortunately only one person could fire the rocket. Kai-Yin was chosen. He tried to make sure the rocket was kept within the angle parameters which would produce the best lift and distance. It certainly paid off. Two rockets had reached the back of the hall, but Charles Duke’s face was a picture as our rocket, named Ax 16, flew up to the balcony and stayed there beating all other teams.
The team then lined up on stage to be handed their prizes of air rocket kits and to participate in a press photocall with the astronaut. An article on the event appeared in the Enquirer and the Living magazine 119 (Page 10)
Ms L Ford
http://www.charlieduke.net/apolloxvi.htm
I enjoyed my time at Ardleigh Green College and meeting Charles Duke Jr and learning about the moon missions from someone who has experienced what it was actually like. The rocket building competition was great too, and I’m glad our team won. It was a great experience, and if I could, I would do it again.
Kemal Rogers
I had a really good experience after meeting an astronaut that actually landed on the Moon and won a rocket building competition at Ardleigh Green College. At first, we received name tags showing our name and school. We (me, Kemal, and Arun) then sat down on the front row. We were really excited when the astronaut, Charles Moss Duke Jr came on the stage in front of us. But after what he said came a surprise, at the second session of our visit, we were meant to be building rockets. I did not know anything of the competition and we were up against all of the other schools in Havering, with some students in years above us. Nevertheless, we worked as a team to produce a rocket made from card and held together by tape. We had a photo of all the other schools’ rockets along with ours and got prepared to launch the rocket. I had the honours to pump our rocket on the stage through an air pump and, to our surprise, ours went the furthest, landing on the balcony on the second floor!
This day is certainly worth remembering.
Kai-Yin Wong
I really enjoyed the trip to meet the astronaut. It was a once in a lifetime opportunity. The talk by Charles Duke was interesting and the rocket competition fun, especially because we won! If I could do it all again, I would!
Lee Howe
On Thursday the 19th November, me, 5 other students, Miss Ford and Mr Foot went to meet the astronaut Charles Duke at Havering College. The talk he gave was an inspirational one that I will remember for a long time. The talk was about his career and involvement in the Apollo missions. We also watched a video clip of his work on the moon which I found fascinating and took a great interest in watching everything he did on the moon, all the experiments to help discover several different aspects on the moon. After the videos and the talk there was a competition to see which school could make a rocket that travelled the furthest and naturally the Abbs Cross team won as we kept our rocket airtight and streamlined, and when we launched it, the rocket flew into the top balcony! This was a day I’ll never forget.
Emma Spray
On Thursday 19th of November I met an astronaut. I went with other students and Mrs Ford to Havering College to meet Mr Charles Moss Duke. We sat through a speech by Charles and he told us about his journey to the moon on the Apollo Mission. He said that he fell over a few times and rode on a moon buggy. Then we made our own rockets and it was with no surprise that Abbs Cross won as we made ours very airtight. Our rocket went on to the balcony. This is an experience I will never forget.
Lauren Cooper
I enjoyed myself a lot while we were at Ardleigh Green College. We went there for a chance to meet Charles Duke Jr and participate in a rocket making competition. We won. I was really surprised. I don’t think we tried particularly hard on making the rocket and there seemed to be other schools using very ‘technical’ ideas and making the rocket with precision. The person out of our group of six to launch the rocket was my friend Kai-Yin Wong. Before our turn to launch the rocket was up, Kai-yin and I had an argument on who should fire the rocket. I think we made the correct decision. What I was extremely happy with, was that we beat year 11s who should have known a lot about science and how to deal with what we were doing.
This day was a very fun day in our adventures in Abbs Cross and I’m glad we went.
Arun Sharma