Engineering labs with the math left in

Rocket Flight Computer & Telemetry Lab

Build a barometric + IMU flight logger for a model rocket, predict apogee from thrust and drag, then compare the prediction with the logged flight.

Rocket Motor Sim Report

Send us your rocket’s dimensions and weight. We run it in OpenRocket and send back a report: stability margin at liftoff and burnout, predicted altitude on certified motors (thrustcurve.org data), landing speed, wind drift, and a launch-rod pass/fail for today’s wind. Every input shown.

Reviewed by Dr. Haney. Grades 9–12, ages 10+ with adult supervision. Estimates, not guarantees.

Drone PID Test Stand

Hold a motor-and-prop arm level on a single-axis pivot, tune a PID controller by experiment, and log step responses to measure overshoot and settling time.

Inverse Kinematics Robot Arm

Build a 3-joint servo arm, derive its forward and inverse kinematics, and measure how far the gripper lands from commanded targets.

Wind Turbine Blade Design Lab

Design and test small turbine blades in front of a fan, measure electrical power across loads, and plot power coefficient against tip-speed ratio.

CubeSat Payload Systems Lab

Build a ground-test sensor payload in the 1U CubeSat form factor, write its power and data budgets, and verify it against requirements with bench tests.

Thermal Imaging & Heat Transfer Lab

Use a low-resolution thermal sensor array to image heat flow, then measure conduction and cooling curves and compare them with simple models.

Satellite Ground Station

Build a 137 MHz antenna and SDR receiver, predict passes from orbital elements, and decode images from weather satellites still transmitting in that band.

Machine Vision Sorting Robot

Build a camera-guided servo sorter, classify objects by color or shape, and measure accuracy with a confusion matrix.

DIY Spectrometer & Light Analysis Lab

Build a diffraction-grating spectrometer with a camera, calibrate it against known emission lines, and measure the spectra of lamps and filters.

Solar Tracker & Max Power Lab

Build a two-axis light-seeking tracker, sweep a small solar panel's I–V curve to find its maximum power point, and compare fixed versus tracked energy.

Laser Rangefinder & 3D Scanner

Sweep a time-of-flight laser distance sensor on a pan-tilt mount to build a room point cloud, and log ranging accuracy against distance, surface color, and angle.

Weather Balloon Near-Space Mission

Plan a high-altitude balloon flight: build a sensor payload that logs its own flight path, predict ascent rate and burst altitude, and compare the predictions with recovered data.

Self-Balancing Robot

Build a two-wheeled inverted-pendulum robot, fuse gyro and accelerometer data, and tune a controller that keeps it upright.

Radio Telescope & Hydrogen Line Lab

Build a small 1420 MHz receiver with a horn antenna and SDR, try to detect 21-cm hydrogen emission from the Milky Way, and turn its Doppler shift into a velocity.

Star Tracker & Satellite Attitude Lab

Point a reaction-wheel turntable using a camera that matches star patterns on a printed star field, close the pointing loop, and measure pointing accuracy and jitter.

Heat Engine & Thermodynamics Lab

Run a hot-water Stirling engine, log temperatures, pressure, and RPM, reconstruct its P–V cycle, and compare its efficiency with the Carnot limit.

Brain-Computer Interface Lab

Build a battery-powered single-channel EEG recorder, compare FFT alpha band power with eyes open and closed, and train a simple classifier to switch an LED, tested against chance. Educational and non-medical.

Cosmic Ray Muon Detector Lab

Build a plastic-scintillator and SiPM muon detector, then measure how the cosmic-ray count rate changes with zenith angle, shielding, and altitude. No radioactive sources.