About Land a rocket on a planet
Click here to go to the Land a rocket on a planet webpage.
The 'Land a rocket on a planet' is a game, but with serious ideas beind it.
First, it is a simulation (if a very simple one). Flight similuators are used to train pilots. It is a lot easier and safer for pilots to 'crash' a plane by mistake on a simulator than in real life, and it means that all sorts of extreme conditions can be used in their training, for the first time they meet a real storm or fog, they know what to do.
However, this game has another purpose (since the openings for human pilots to land on the other planets of our solar system are limited!) In this game, you are dealing with acceleration rather than speed. Children find these concepts hard to disentangle - how you can have a negetive acceleration, but a positive speed, for example. The game requires you to get the rocket to a certain point, the surface of the planet, which is to do with distance, at a low enough speed. But to do this, you have only one control - the thrust or acceleration. Children pick up the control quite easily, and while they may not realise what they are doing, a teacher can use the game to demonstrate the difference between acceleration, velocity (or speed) and distance.
The game also allows you to choose a planet, and the gravities of the planets are correct. This gives you a very quick feel for what those gravities are and makes you realise the real differences between them.
It's also a fun game. This type of game is one of the very early computer games (in universities rather than in the real world) but it can still be a challenge!
Click here to go to the Land a rocket on a planet webpage.
My name is Jo Edkins - index to all my websites - any questions or comments,
email jo.edkins.planet@gwydir.demon.co.uk
© Jo Edkins 2006