The 20 sixth graders who are going to take pre-algebra summer school later this month discovered for themselves that solving algebraic equations in your head – specifically involving distance-rate-time variables – can mean the difference between life and death at 30,000 feet.

The students from the ACE Charter School in Alum Rock, a low-income neighborhood in San Jose, were at the helm last week of an FAA’s flight control simulator, guiding in planes on flight paths that put their sense of proportion to work.

ACE middle school students and instructor guide planes through a flight simulation.

Developed by NASA Ames in Mountain View, Smart Skies gives middle school students real-world applications of abstract math. It’s the kind of connection beyond the textbook that all middle schoolers need. For the ACE students, it was a good way to put them in the mood for spending four weeks indoors, learning math that will place them on a path to pass Algebra I by the end of eighth grade.

Sitting two and three students together in front of computer screens, ACE students had the unique pleasure of working with retired and actual  air traffic controllers from Oakland at a student lab that once was part of a wind tunnel. But NASA also has put videos, materials and the simulator on the Web, and the Silicon Valley Education Foundation has posted detailed lesson plans, including the state standards that are covered, on its lesson-plan sharing site, Lessonopoly. (The Foundation, with ALearn and the Hispanic Foundation of Silicon Valley, is also organizing and sponsoring the summer school for 750 students from ACE and nine school districts in Silicon Valley.)

The goal for the student-controllers is to guide planes traveling on different flight paths from different parts of the country as they converge over Modesto, then line up to descend on a central path to San Francisco.  Throw in a time limit, and it’s quite a challenge. Students must keep the planes, traveling at hundreds of knots, at least three nautical miles apart. Using a mouse, they can control the speeds of individual planes.

As the students get the knack, they go from guiding three planes to five. It can get hairy.

Students are applying the same algebraic equations and proportional reasoning that air traffic controllers do daily, said NASA’s Greg Condon. (Granted, other variables – lots more planes, the third dimension of vertical height, winds, storms and the awareness that hundreds of lives are at risk – make it a gut-wrenching job. But you get the point.) Condon, who ran the research division at NASA Ames, developed Smart Skies and tested it on 6,000 students.

About two groups a day come to the classroom lab at NASA Ames. Condon said initially teachers had students prepare for the simulator by doing math lessons on time-rate-distance equations. But the secret, he said, is for students to have fun with the simulator first. Then, having seen proportionality and algebra in action with real-life problems, they’re more able and motivated to learn theorems and do math on paper.