Digital Natives: Teens, Tweens, & Digital Media: Launching Red Bird Into Space: Angry Birds Goes for Ride With NASA

NASA is playing a key role in the fourth installment of the popular mobile- and browser-based game “Angry Birds.” Plus, how physics teachers are using the game with student-scientists in the classroom.

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Filed by Christine C.

In a move that may end debate over the educational value of “Angry Birds,” NASA is playing a key role in the fourth installment of the popular mobile- and browser-based game.

For “Angry Birds Space,” scheduled for release March 22 on iTunes and other platforms, Rovio Entertainment collaborated with NASA to apply the laws of physics that exist in outer space. In the game, cartoon birds are launched to destroy pigs. Players can alter the angle and power of the catapult to change the birds’ trajectory.

In this video filmed inside the International Space Station, NASA flight engineer Don Pettit carries out demonstrations while floating around the station.

“It’s a good thing I decided to be a scientist and an engineer instead of an artist because I’d probably be starving by now,” says Pettit as he draws a face on a balloon pig. He then holds up two eggs that the pig steals from angry birds (assuming they all didn’t float away).

“Don’t ask me how I got the eggs on the Space Station,” he adds.

Using a bungee cord spread across the hatchway as a sling shot, Pettit later shoots a stuffed toy bird down a tunnel to show the trajectory Angry Red Bird will have in a zero-gravity setting. Is this the too-good-to-be-true fun you’ve been waiting for?

Plus: Last year, eSchool News covered how teachers use the not-so-simple-after-all “Angry Birds” as an educational tool. John Burk, a physics teacher at Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Ga., explains the appeal: “We’re using physics to explore this completely new video game world. We get to ask questions just like scientists ask when they’re trying to figure out the atmospheric composition of a planet, or the motion of a new never-before-seen asteroid,” said Burk. “What are the laws of physics in the ‘Angry Birds’ world? My students get a chance to be scientists and be among the first to find the answer to this question.”

And here’s a review for parents from Common Sense Media.