I have found two uses for roleplaying events in engineering courses. The first and most obvious is E&E: Entertainment and Engagement. A roleplaying bit livens up a book- or lecture- based class. It engages the participants by involving all the senses and the trio of mental, verbal and kinetic activity. It also encourages thinking beyond the usual pen-and-pencil answer style.

The second reason for roleplays is they better mimic real-world situations. In the real world, an engineer will rarely be given a test sheet with 5-10 problems on completely different topics. Instead, they will have to face a problem that requires assembling and stringing together the right set of solution pieces to bring about a meaningful conclusion.

Further, roleplay encourages group interaction, a strong point in modern scientific and engineering workplaces. So why aren't roleplaying activities more often used in teaching? We're back to the first 'E' in E&E: Entertaining. Anything seen as 'entertaining' is often allowed so long as it doesn't take up too much time from 'the real work'.

I submit, instead, that roleplaying exercises are the real world, and book/lecture/quiz learning is simply an approximation and a tool, not a complete learning solution.

Hence this problem/scenario below. I could have written the orbital mechanic problem as:

An object is moving at either apogee (furthest approach) or perigee (closest approach) around the Earth. We meaure its velocity as 8.55km/sec at an altitude of 622km. The radius of the Earth is 6378km, μ=398,600 km3/s2, and 2π/μ = 0.00995, see also reference equations 2.63, 2.31, 2.70, 2.90, 2.105, 2.83, 2.73.[e Determine the orbit shape and/or eccentricies, which orbit shape it could not be, and next approach at that altitude.

It's a straightforward problem, right? It tests juggling the correct orbital equations. However, a far more likely situation is what is presented below. I dressed as an air force pseudomilitary officer, required the students form a group of 4 to do this as a team exercise, and gave a back story that could plausibly happen.

In short, the 'entertaining roleplay' was far more like real life than a typical quiz. "Scenario" version of the same question is after my sign-off signature. Which woudl you rather solve?

Until next month,
Sandy (sandy@rpg.net)

Orbit Determination Briefing and Assignment

Hello cadets. We have a situation. Briefing sheets are up front. You are to work as a team on this and turn in one solution for the group. Put simply, you pass or fail together. A perfect score is 100. We recommend you divide up the problem, as you have only 15 minutes to deliver your solutions. For each additional minute taken past 10, we subtract 1 point from your score.

Ground tracking briefly picked up an orbiting entity. We have a single position/velocity/direction measurement. Fortunately, at the time of measurement, it was moving perfectly tangential to the Earth. So we are confident it was an apogee or perigee passage. It was moving at 8.55 km/sec at an altitude of 622 km.

Obviously the radius of the Earth is 6378 km,μ=398,600 km3/s2, and 2π/μ = 0.00995, if that helps, as does reference equations 2.63, 2.31, 2.70, 2.90, 2.105, 2.83, 2.73.

We need to know what its orbit is so we can hit it-- if it comes back. All we can confirm is that the shape of the orbit is not hyperbolic, however, it could be circular, parabolic, or elliptical.

We want your best set of orbit determinations-- at a minimum:

1st: What shape(s) and/or eccentricities it could be, and what shape(s) and/or eccentricities it clearly cannot be, and your mathematical justification.

2nd: When will it next be at that altitude, if at all (aka its period, if it has one)

3rd: Rough sketches, if possible, of the solutions evaluated to ensure you checked all reasonable cases.