Rocket Mocs help elementary school campers soar

Girls Preparatory School summer campers participated in a UTC Rocket Mocs launch event on Friday, June 27. Photo by Angela Foster.

“It was so cool and I’ve never seen a rocket do that before in person,” said Erin, a rising fifth grader at the Girls Preparatory School (GPS) Summer Camp. “I thought it went so high and I loved just seeing it fall. It was just really cool.”

On a recent June morning at the GPS soccer field, Erin saw her rocket fly 263 feet in the air at 135 feet per second. She was part of the first group of students to launch the rockets, and hers went the farthest.

Erin wants to be a baker when she grows up and quickly pointed out that baking involves science.

That’s the goal of hosting the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Rocket Mocs, according to Meghan Smith, a seventh-grade science teacher at GPS who is chaperoning the summer camp.

“Being able to put the concepts that are abstract in their mind and making it a hands-on, tangible experience makes learning go so much farther than it could in the classroom,” Smith said. “It means a lot to create something and then be able to see it actually come to life.”

The students got to experience science firsthand, which is something Smith does not take for granted.

“These girls are rising third through fifth graders,” Smith said. “I know when I was this age, I didn’t think that being able to create, design and launch a rocket was possible. Being able to give them these kinds of opportunities and let them know that engineering and design concepts are possible for them is so cool.”

Students who participated were involved in every step of the process. They created, designed, decorated and finally retrieved their rocket after launch.

UC Foundation Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering Trevor Elliott has been the Rocket Mocs faculty advisor since its inception. He was responsible for loading and launching the rockets while maintaining a safe distance from the launch site.

UTC students use much more powerful rockets, even breaking the world record for launching a rocket to a height of just over 17,000 feet. The objective for those competitions is to win, whereas events like the one at GPS aim to showcase what future UTC students can accomplish.

Elliott wants to spread the word about science, technology, engineering and math concepts.

“I found out about this opportunity because my daughter is in the age bracket to go to camp,” Elliott said. “I told them I work at UTC and I’ve got some summer camp funding for stuff that’s kind of workshop-based.”

Once approved, Elliott and mechanical engineering graduate student Rett Stockman—who works as a graduate assistant while pursuing his master’s degree—began preparing for launch day. The process involved 3D printing three to six nose cones, a body tube and fin cans.

Wanting to give the students options and their personal rockets, Stockman and Elliott looked at some unusual sources for inspiration.

“We have a variety of options so that they’ll be able to choose what they want their rocket to look like,” Stockman said. “One of them is that kind of classic, good small airframe diameter, good solid fins and very robust functional scientific design. We also wanted to offer some alternative options.

“One of the places we took inspiration from was a cartoon that had a Looney Tunes-style cartoon rocket. We took those ideas and put them into the same simulation software that we use for these high-powered rockets. We use that same software to simulate the designs in order to make sure the rockets were going to be safe and that they’re going to travel the heights we wanted.”

Campers had the opportunity to count down the launch of their rockets.

Stockman served as the Rocket Mocs team lead as a senior during the 2023-24 academic year. He is very familiar with the design process of rockets and was responsible for ensuring the designs were ready for launch day.

“The fins and bodies take between an hour and a half to two hours to print,” he explained prior to the event, “and the nose cones take about 20 minutes. The groups we’re working with here are around 12 to 18 students. We’ll be able to print those off on a couple of printers overnight and then be ready to launch.”

On launch day, rising senior Gabe Mejia was responsible for recording the data from the rockets. The Chattanooga native is the current team lead for the Rocket Mocs.

This year, the club will have an extra semester to work on its rocket for competition. The Rocket Mocs are currently planning and writing reports before team members begin building in the fall.

Mejia knows how valuable the summer camp experience is for younger students.

“I wasn’t exposed to this stuff until several years after I went to college,” Mejia said. “It was cool to see the little kids excited. I was talking to one of them and she said, ‘This was my first rocket launch. I’ve seen videos. I’ve always thought it was cool, but I’ve never seen one in person.’ It reminded me of whenever I saw my first rocket launch; it was a little bit bigger, but it just left me in awe. That’s what got me into rockets.”