FDTC launches rocket-themed Discovery Camp
By Samantha Lyles, Staff Writer, slyles@newsandpress.net
Florence-Darlington Technical College held its annual summer science-themed Discovery Camp last week, and kids enrolled in this year’s camp got a crash course in the principles of rocket design and performance.
Debbie Chapman has served as Discovery Camp coordinator for three years, and she says this year’s focus on rockets has provided campers hailing from near and far with plenty of fun engineering and problem solving challenges.
“We have rising fourth graders to rising ninth graders at this camp. We’ve got kids from the state of Georgia, we’ve got Darlington students, we’ve got some from Greenville, Hannah-Pamplico, home schoolers, and even some who are down here visiting from New York,” says Chapman. “It’s just a great camp for them to come to.”
Chapman says the rocket builds started slow, with a basic ‘stomp rocket’ which launched a small rocket off the end of a stomped 2-liter soda bottle. Then campers graduated to building matchbox rockets, spitball-style RPG launchers (using drinking straws and bang snap novelty fireworks), and finally Estes model rockets capable of flying more than 1,000 feet high.
Chad Bacote, 11, said his grandmother gave him the choice between attending a regular summer camp or going to Discovery Camp, and his choice was pretty clear.
“I decided to do this one because it sounded cooler,” says Chad. “I’ve made a spitball gun where you blow into a straw and it launches a popper, so it makes a ‘bang!’ sound when it hits. I’ve made matchbox rockets, and now I’m working on an Estes Alpha rocket.”
Bacote will attend Darlington Middle School next year and plans to be in the magnet program, as well as honors reading and math programs – good grounding for his dream career as a civil engineer.
Nine year-old Cameron Gainey, a student at St. John’s Elementary, says he “got really excited” about the camp when he learned this year’s theme would be rocketry. This aspiring rocket scientist says his favorite experiment was the matchbox rockets, which used a wood skewer, a tea candle, and the power of lit match heads to launch tiny aluminum foil rockets up to 40 feet in the air.
Chapman says the campers responded well to the trial-and-error approach used in these experiments, and they made adjustments each time to improve the performance of their rockets.
“We also made some mistakes, but a good science student will fail and then re-engineer things to make it work,” says Chapman, noting that campers designed wind deflectors to protect their matchbox rocket fire sources, and increased the launch power by using three match heads instead of one. “We found that if we just tweaked a few things, the rockets would work better.”
Each spring, Chapman decides on a summer camp theme and submits this idea to the college. She says that any parent or student interested in learning about next year’s camp is invited to inquire with FDTC about attending Discovery Camp. To learn more, call Florence-Darlington Technical College at (843) 661-8324