Rocket Science at SJDCHS

March 7, 2012

For nearly ten years, Mr. Mahoney served as a spaceflight instructor in the Mission Operations Directorate at Johnson Space Center. He taught astronauts, flight controllers, and fellow instructors in the disciplines of orbital mechanics, computers, navigation, rendezvous, and proximity operations. SJDCHS is proud to have Mr. Mahoney on staff teaching Physics to juniors and Technology to freshmen.

The junior class had the unique experience of building soda-bottle rockets in their Physics class taught by Mr. Bob Mahoney to help learn the core idea of Newton's Third Law of Motion: for every action there is an equal or opposite reaction. The rockets, made of soda bottles and cardboard fins, used water as a propellant and air pressure (via a bicycle pump) to generate the thrust.

More recently, the junior class was able to create riding hovercrafts under the supervision of Mr. Mahoney in order to learn more about force, mass, inertia, velocity, acceleration, and torque. The hovercrafts were made of wood, box floor fans, leaf blowers and pulleys.

On February 16, the two Physics classes raced their hovercrafts through an obstacle course. Both teams were able to raise their hovercrafts off the ground and travel through the San Jose Parish Hall. The entire school was able to watch and cheer on their fellow classmates through the race.

For more photos of the hovercraft races, click here.