Journey to Titan is a 10-session, 15–20 hour hands-on Math Lab where students build a motorized racer — the E.E.V. — using Circuit Cubes™ kits, ramp materials, tape measures, and stopwatches. Teams conduct time trials, collect real distance and time data, and record results on mission planning sheets and data forms.

Students start by building the racer and making physical measurements — timing runs, recording distances, calculating speed by hand. From there, they move to representing their data in tables and on graphs, comparing rates across trials. By the end of the sequence, they're working with ratio, unit rate, and percent abstractly — creating flight plans, decoding launch sequences, and applying proportional reasoning to navigate a rescue mission on Saturn's largest moon.

How the Curriculum Works

Students receive a distress signal from Titan. Over 10 sessions, they design, build, measure, and calculate their way to a rescue:

• Session 1: Students design a team flag using ratio and scale.
• Session 2: Students build their E.E.V. racer from Circuit Cubes™ components and make initial predictions about its speed.
• Session 3: Time trials — students set up ramps, release their racers, start and stop stopwatches, stretch tape measures along the floor, mark distances, and calculate unit rate.
• Sessions 4–5: Students make rate predictions using their data, then develop accuracy by refining measurement techniques across repeated trials.
• Session 6: Students change ramp height and measure how speed changes — calculating variable rates and comparing results across trials.
• Session 7: Students build a flight plan using percent increase and decrease to calculate fuel requirements and plot a course from Earth to Titan.
• Session 8: Students decode a launch sequence using ratio and percent.
• Sessions 9–10: Students send their robot TYRO to Titan using accumulated rate and ratio skills, then plan a planetary evacuation pulling together ratio, rate, and percent.

Who It's For

• 6th grade teachers looking for hands-on supplemental curriculum in ratio, rate, and percent
• 5th and 7th grade teachers who need review and enrichment
• Afterschool and summer program directors who want turnkey STEM programming
• Curriculum coordinators looking for hands-on, standards-aligned supplements that work alongside any core curriculum — no adoption process required

What's in the Kit

All racer kits and ramp materials are durable — buy once, use every year. Consumable items are paper-based: mission sheets, data forms, and team flag templates.

• Circuit Cubes™ motorized racer kits (E.E.V.)
• Ramp materials for data collection
• Tape measures and stopwatches
• Mission planning sheets and data recording forms
• Team flag templates and design materials
• Graphing paper and calculation sheets
• Construction paper, markers, stickers
• Quick reference booklet

Every session runs through a web-based slide portal at algebrastudio.org. Howie is the on-screen instructor in embedded video mini-lessons — he introduces each task, demonstrates the math, and guides students through the activity. The slides run the session. Open the kit, follow the slides, and go.

Sessions run between 45 and 90 minutes, with some extending longer at the teacher's discretion. The curriculum works as a daily block (3–4 weeks), a twice-weekly enrichment (5–10 weeks), or an afterschool/summer program. It supplements any core curriculum — students learn ratio, rate, and percent through their regular instruction, and Journey to Titan is where they apply those concepts with physical materials and collaborative problem-solving.