New Perspectives in Science Education

The courses of study for a junior high school will be revised by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan in the next fiscal year. Over the years, it has been a problem that students do not actually feel the significance and usefulness of studying Science, thus the school hours for experimental trainings in Science and Technology will not be increased when it was reviewed from its circumstances of the past courses of study.  Furthermore, in order to improve a student's individual skill and volition, teachers have to understand the personality of each student further, and find the time to face each student, cooperating with an organization outside of the school.  However, it is difficult to conduct time-consuming experiments and training in a public junior high school due to extra costs, extra works compared with a regular lesson, even though, most teachers have high volition and awareness about the education in the school. Therefore, effective educational materials are required in Science and Technology.

Junior high school students are interested in the space anatomy, space technology, rockets and so on. Pictures of rockets are commonly included in a Japanese Science textbook to stimulate the interest towards Science.  Therefore, a rocket is considered to be a useful tool in increasing the motivation of a student studying Science and Technology. A hybrid rocket is simple in structure compared to a liquid rocket.  A hybrid rocket doesn't use gunpowder, so it is safer compared to a solid rocket. Furthermore, hybrid rockets have been used as commercial space rockets to move private citizens to space such as "Space Ship I" manufactured by "Scaled Composites". In this study, a small hybrid rocket was developed as an educational material using conventional materials such as a carbonate plastic bottle, polyethylene, aluminum, steel, and nichrome wire. The rocket can be launched in a science class room regardless of weather.  The aim of this study is to validate the effectiveness and problems of the utilization of hybrid rocket as an educational material for usual science classes in a public junior high school.  As a result, the utilization of the hybrid rocket as an educational material with the cooperation between a junior high school and a university was very effective not only to achieve the purpose of science lessons, but also in order to evoke the interest to engineering and science.