Space Shoes — a Moonhack project
Did you know that the athletic shoes we wear today are made with technology that was invented for space? For space travel, astronauts wear helmets that are made with shock-absorbent rubber molding. The rubber material was invented to prevent injury for our astronauts. This material was then used by athletic shoe companies in shoe soles to rebound the energy from an athlete’s foot hitting the ground, to provide the athlete with extra lift.
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This invention was the inspiration for the Moonhack 2023 project Space Shoes.
This Scratch coding project is our easiest project for coders to complete Moonhack 2023. The project uses costumes, user input and broadcast to create an interactive show. The user can click on each part of the shoe (sole, shoe, logo, laces and background) to change it’s costume, creating a brand-new shoe. This simple project is easy to create and would be suitable for coders who are new to coding.
Australian Curriculum Links
The Space Shoes project is an example of work suitable for the year 1–2 band of the Digital Technologies curriculum. The coding provides a solution to a simple problem and uses sequences of steps and simple decisions in algorithms. The challenges within this project would introduce more complex forms of branching to make it more appropriate for the year 3–4 band of the curriculum.
This project also links well to Science as a Human Endeavour by exploring how people use science in everyday lives.
Further Resources
To see this project in action check out our Code Along video where Kaye teaches the project in a step-by-step video. Why not use this for your coders to follow along with?
For more information about this invention check out this article from NASA.
You can also watch this short video from CNN about this innovation from space.
Meet our testers
We had testers from both Montello Code Club and St Helen’s Code Club for the Space Shoes project. The testers were all young people from the club who volunteered for this important role. They engaged with the project and then shared their projects, thoughts, improvements and excitement, to ensure that the finished product was ready for Moonhackers around the world.
One coder from Montello commented, “It was fun because I got to be creative and it made me have lots of fun. More people should have the chance to do this, we are lucky to get to have this opportunity.”
I had the opportunity to meet online with the coders to discuss their thoughts in person. When asked about the difficulty of the project one coder said, “I think younger kids would find it easier to do but still learn to code. I give this project 10 out of 10. The project was awesome.”
Moonhack takes place from October 10th to 26th in 2023. Make sure you register to be counted in this year’s numbers!
Kaye
Moonhack Mission Control
