What's
with the title you ask? It's taken from NASA's website one aspect of
the amazing program I have and will continue to be invoved in. It's
also, the final item of description used to describe the Reduced
Gravity Research Programs former airplane KC-135 affectionately known
as the "Vomit Comet." NASA has since replaced this aircraft with a C-9
plane and renamed it the "Weightless Wonder."
This past
Summer, four teachers -- myself included -- at Crossroads Elementary
school in St Paul discussed, wrote and applied for a NASA grant. We
knew this coming year, our sixth grade students would be studying
Newton's Law of Gravity as part of their Science curricula. Our NASA
application/proposal was to perform student-designed experiements and
fly with NASA in a Reduced Gravity environment.
A plane
called a C-9 will make two flights over the Golf of Mexico. I will a
part of a team of teachers that will perform our students' experiments
during a series of 30 to 40 nose-diving parabolas over the course of a
2 to 3 hour flight. Each parabola will allow us to experience 25 to 30
seconds of weightlessness -- we're going to free-fall within an
aircraft -- followed by 2 minutes of experiencing 1.8 times the force
of the Earth's gravity on our bodies (aka Hypergravity)
This
Fall, sixth grade students at Crossroads Science began exploring
gravitational properties, center of gravity & mass, spinning,
twisting, rotating and Newton's laws. First with objects, then with
their bodies and finally with spinning tops. Students Scientists
refined their experiments to include how hypothesis as to how a top
spins in Reduced (near zero gravity), Earth's Gravity and Hyper (1.8
G's) gravity (the incline of the fore-mentioned parabola):
•
Wondering how changes in a spinning object's center of mass (pennies at
different locations on top with a horizontal surface) is affected in a
reduced-gravity environment;
• wondering how changes in a top's hight is affected in reduced-gravity environment;
• wondering the effects of magnetic forces on how an object spins in a reduced-gravity environment;
• and lastly, wondering how regular & irregular forms spin in reduced gravity enviroment.
Since October, students have explored, created and performed orignal
whole-class dance incorporating both their hypotheses and predicted
results. At the same time, students have recorded and graphed the
afftects of Earth's gravitational forces affect these objects. Our job
as teacher-facilitators is to perform and document the affects of
zero-gravity environment will have on these objects.
Wedensday, February 6th four Educators will travel to NASA's Johnson
Space Center (JSC) in Houston, TX to train with the folks at NASA,
prepare our student's experiments as well as prepare our bodies both
mentally and physically for the tasks that lay ahead.
To find out more about NASA's program, you can visit:
http://microgravityuniversity.jsc.nasa.gov/theProgram/index.cfm Wheeeewhooo!
