New Perspectives in Science Education

Over the years, it has been a problem in Japan that students do not actually feel the significance and usefulness of studying Science compared with another country. However, the school hours for experimental training 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. 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. In addition, the number of teacher in a high school has not been increased. Therefore, effective educational materials are required in Science and Technology. Junior high school students are interested in space anatomy, space technology, rockets and so on. Pictures of rockets are commonly included in a Japanese Science textbook to stimulate interest towards Science. Therefore, a rocket is considered to be a useful tool in increasing the motivation of a student studying Science and Technology.  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 classroom regardless of weather.  Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) supports many scientific programs. “Hirameki, Tokimeki, Science”(HTS) is one of such outreach programs held by JSPS. HTS introduces university scientific researches and a fascination of science to the students between 5th and 12th Grade (10 to 18 years old) students. Our educational hybrid rocket was demonstrated in HTS 2019. The title of our program is 'Excitement of a Real Rocket' (Rocket outreach program for tomorrow's study). The aim of this study is to validate the effectiveness and problems of the utilization of hybrid rocket as educational material in an outreach program such as HTS program. As a result, the utilization of the hybrid rocket as educational material in order to evoke the interest to engineering and science was very effective not only in order to achieve the purpose of a science lesson but also in order to evoke the interest of engineering and science. However, we have to try to shorten the assembling process and to simplify preparations equipment.

Keywords: Hybrid Rocket, Education Material, Outreach Program, Science Class, Technology Class.