Theory
State the engineering choice you must justify. Stage intent: trade-off.
For teachers
Prepare a mission
Everything you need to run the lesson: the prompts for this academic depth, the diagnostic answer key, the misconceptions to watch for, and the truth boundary to hold.
Choose the mission and depth
Working hard gets hot.
Space is not a good place to lose heat. There is no air to carry it away, so a spacecraft running its camera and radio has to get rid of that heat through its own structure. Your team will run the same demanding workload on two spacecraft and see how differently they cope.
Pilot lesson
What to say at Grade 8
These prompts come from the academic layer, so they change with the depth you selected.
Prediction
Predict which option better satisfies the named criterion.
Running the Twin
Use the Twin to gather comparison evidence for your justification. Runtime remains the frozen Twin; this plan does not execute physics.
Checkpoint
Check that your evidence actually supports the criterion.
Analysis
Justify the choice and name at least one model limitation. Evidence intent: temperature/power plot + envelope/trade explanation.
Engineering decision
Select and defend an engineering option for this mission question.
Limitation
Name at least one frozen-model limitation that this experiment cannot answer.
Provenance
Keep simulated, simulated_sensor, estimator_state, derived, reference, and measured distinct. Never label simulated as measured.
Diagnostic answer key
Why does electronics running in space get hotter than the same electronics on Earth?
- ✓ There is no air to carry the heat away
- · Space is hot
- · Electricity works differently in space
Timing
One session. Adjust freely — the sequence matters more than the clock.
| When | Stage | What you are doing |
|---|---|---|
| 0–10 min | Mission brief and outcomes | Set the mission question and the success criterion. |
| 10–20 | Diagnostic | Surface prior ideas. No score — this is for you, not them. |
| 20–35 | Visual theory | Work the concept visual. Ask for the idea in their own words. |
| 35–45 | Prediction | Every learner commits in writing before any run. |
| 45–60 | Twin investigation | Baseline first, then the candidate case. |
| 60–70 | Evidence and decision | Compare, choose, and state one limitation. |
| 70–80 | Assessment and result | Formative only. Collect the written reasoning. |
| Home | Home mission | Software-only extension. No hardware, no account. |
Facilitation and the truth boundary
While they work
- The payload workload is identical in both runs. Any learner explaining the difference by the payload has not read the setup.
- The small satellite reaches a much higher peak. Ask what would happen to real electronics at that temperature.
- This is the same runtime as the shadow mission but a different scenario. There the driver was darkness; here it is the spacecraft working hard.
Can the learner explain the temperature difference in terms of the spacecraft, given that the workload was identical?
Hold this line
- The temperature and battery numbers are produced by a model. Nothing here was measured on a real spacecraft.
- The two spacecraft are teaching profiles, not real hardware designs.
- This lesson does not show that either design would survive a real mission.
Home mission
Home mission: nowhere to put the heat
Find something at home that gets warm when it works - a laptop, a charger, a lamp. Find where its heat escapes. Then write one sentence on what would happen to it if there were no air around it at all.
Tell us what did not work
Ten questions, answered locally. Nothing is submitted or tracked — you download the file and send it if you want to.
Informal educator feedback
This local-first form contains the ten approved pilot-review questions. It does not submit, track, or store data remotely. Optional name/contact should be handled outside this form only if a reviewer volunteers it.