2012 December - Michigan Education Association

Bartoldi discusses
“Buster’s Revenge”
with a film crew
from the Science
Channel.
18 DECEMBER 2012
Rocketry Challenge tasked students across the nation with
designing a two-stage rocket weighing less than 1,500
grams that could carry two eggs up to 1,500 feet into the
air—then land safety without breaking the eggs. Bertoldi’s
students devised numerous methods of protecting the
eggs, testing out those methods at a local ski jumping hill.
They built four different rockets and launched 15 practice
runs, making corrections along the way.
The bodies of the rockets only provide one part of the
experience—a lot of the fun comes in designing the
payloads. For that, students get to work side-by-side with
electrical engineers, amateur radio operators and others
to design and build electronic payloads for the rockets.
Students have built payloads to record temperatures,
capture flight sounds, control parachutes, take photographs
and track GPS locations. They’ve even built
video-transmitting payloads that relay video from the
rockets and record it via amateur radio to student-built
antenna systems. And using parts from smoke detectors,
they’ve built tracking buzzers to help locate rockets after
touchdown, which ensures the fun can be repeated.
Along the way, the Kingsford High Powered Rocketry
Program has captured numerous state and national
awards, including DaimlerChrysler’s Engineering
Educator Award and the National Association of
Rocketry’s Robert L. Canon Award.
Even more important than the awards, though, is
the lifelong interest in science sparked in students by
Bertoldi’s program.
“The greatest measure of this program’s success is the
students’ willingness to come in during the evening to
design and construct rockets and payloads, and work
with engineers to learn science on their own time,”
Bertoldi says.
Bertoldi estimates that 60 to 70 percent of his students
eventually advance into science, math and engineering
fields. Alumni have studied aerospace at Purdue
University and the University of Michigan. Another
former student of Bertoldi’s graduated from UM with a
bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering, and went on to
work with computer simulations to detect breast cancer
before recently completing her Ph.D. also in nuclear
engineering.
“When kids get the chances, and when they get the
opportunities, they go on to careers in science and engineering,”
Bertoldi says. “It’s unbelievable where we see
these kids go, and that’s due to this program. That’s one
of the things I’m most proud of.”
Another thing Bertoldi is proud of is working to get more
female students to seek careers in math, science and
technology, as women are notoriously underrepresented
in those fields.
Few women end up working in the hard sciences, despite
research showing that girls are extremely interested
in technical fields. According to a study by the Girl Scout
Research Institute, 85 percent of girls like to solve problems,
83 percent like to complete hands-on science projects,
80 percent ask questions and seek answers about
how things work, and 67 percent like to build things.
“Girls deserve to have the same opportunities as boys,”
Bertoldi says. “You see really good creative engineering
ideas come out of young women. Historically, they’re not
going into those fields. If half the population of this country
is female, then half the engineers should be female.”
Indeed, each year about half of Bertoldi’s program
consists of girls. In some years, females make up the
majority.
Girls and boys alike had equal input into Bertoldi’s most
recent rocketry class, which built its most ambitious
project yet.
“For years, students have asked if they could fly in one
of our rockets—in a joking way,” Bertoldi says. “I would
always tell them that it was against the law for them to
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